The dinner passed off without much hilarity and with no incidents other than one or two casual allusions, on Cornelia's part, to M. St. Hilaire.
As Janet went out with Robert, Kelly, full of mournful resignation, hoped that their purses would survive the brigandage, and their lives the epileptic locomotion, of the Paris taxi-cab drivers. Mazie called out:
"Janet, my gentle pet, don't let Rob land by mistake into the Miroir de Venus." (This was a cafe notorious for its high jinks.)
"Why not?"
"He might reform the joint, before the joint reforms him."
II
They got into an Odéon bus.
On their way via the Boulevard des Italiennes to the Seine, she named a few of the sights they passed, such as the Théâtre Français and the Tuileries. Crossing the Pont du Carrousel, the bus jounced him against her and, as she thrilled to the touch, she felt his magnetic response.
Yet, outwardly, a year and a half had not changed him greatly, she thought. There was the same fire in his eyes (but wasn't there perhaps a shade less of friendliness?). He listened as politely as ever to routine chit-chat, and exhibited the same impetuous candor when the conversation flung up a new idea.
"You haven't changed much, either," he said, rather suddenly, as though he had divined her reflections. "Your contours are a little rounder, that's all, and I think your chin is much firmer."