"I'm afraid you'll have to ask Miss Persse," replied the other slowly; "I'm not in her confidence."
"Well, I'm sorry," the politician said. "I hoped you were going to settle down and lead an honest life."
"I've kept out of prison—and Parliament, so far," replied Caragh thoughtfully.
"Your things turned up all right, and I took a room for them," Vernon explained, as they landed at the Ferencz Jozsef Quay and went up to the hotel. "The place is so full over this religious Bill that it's hard to get in anywhere."
He went up with Caragh to see if the right room had been reserved.
"We're dining down below at seven; everything's early here. Kapitany is coming, the leader of the opposition in the Magnates."
Caragh got out of his wet things in which he had lived during the two days of rain, took a bath, and dressed. There were still two hours to dinner, and he debated for a moment if he should go in search of Ethel Vernon. Something in his remembrance of her husband's smile, however, seemed to deprecate hurry, and he was aware that the man who knew not how to wait came only to the things he had not wanted.
As he doubted what to do, he remembered vividly where he was. While he loitered, under an apricot twilight the Váczi-utcza was becoming silvered with its thousand lamps.
At that hour the brilliant merry little street would be filling, between its walls of blazing windows, across the breadth of its asphalte road, with a stream of men and women; men of fine carriage and women with splendid eyes; laughing, chattering, flaunting, flirting, strolling idly to and fro.
He would sit there again, as he had sat so often, to sip his coffee and watch the crowd.