A week later Fallon, dressed in white duck, knocked early one morning at Mrs. Kontorompa’s drawing-room door. Katya and Katya’s mother were to go with him to Langaza to picnic. But at the very last moment Mrs. Kontorompa, as had been arranged between her daughter and herself, felt indisposed.
“You will come by yourself,” said Fallon.
“Of course,” answered Katya.
The chauffeur was discreet and unobservant: he was paid a very large salary for not seeing things.
Their car was fitted with a lace awning, but the air was so hot and dry, that before they were well over the deserted Lembet plain they were inordinately thirsty. So Fallon stopped the car and opened a half-bottle of champagne.
“I didn’t bring champagne just because it’s expensive,” he explained, “but because I know you like it. Look!—the ice is half melted already.”
“It will be cooler by the lake,” said Katya; “there may even be a little breeze. I never drink champagne on a hot day,” she added, “without longing to have a bath in it. It would tingle so deliciously, like electricity.”
“Sensualist! I’ve often noticed you love the sensations you’ve never experienced.”
“The worst of it is, there are so few of them left.”
But Fallon was not interested, and he threw the empty bottle on the roadside with a gesture of boredom.