"You called sooner than I expected," she said in a note of equivocal pleasantry.
"Or I," he rejoined with a shade of triumph, the politest of triumph. He was a step above her, her head on a level with the pocket of his blouse. His square shoulders, commanding height, and military erectness were thus emphasized, as was her own feminine slightness.
"I want to thank you," she said. "As becomes a soldier, your forethought was expressed in action. It was the promptness of the men you sent to look after the garden which saved the uprooted plants before they were past recovery."
"I wished it for your sake and somewhat for my own sake to be the same that it was in the days when I used to call," he said graciously. "Tea was from four to five, do you remember? Will you join me? I have just ordered it."
A generous, pleasant conqueror, this! No one knew better than Westerling how to be one when he chose. He was something of an actor. Leaders of men of his type usually are.
"Why, yes. Very gladly!" she assented with no undue cordiality and no undue constraint, quite as if there were no war.
"It was the Browns who cut the lindens?" he suggested significantly.
"They said that it was necessary as part of the defence," she replied. "We shall plant new ones and have the pleasure of watching them grow."
Neutrality could not be better impersonated he thought, than in the even cleaving of her lips over the words. They seemed to say that a storm had come and gone and a new set of masters had taken the place of the old. As they approached the veranda François was placing the tea things.
"Quite the same! That was your chair, as I remember," said Westerling after indicating to François that he might go, "and this was mine."