Having reached the door, she turned.
“Good night, Lovelace,” she said.
And behind me I heard his voice, low and grave:
“Good night, Madame.”
If she was beautiful that night, she was still more beautiful next morning at breakfast. Poets have described the kind of woman she was: I cannot. I can but give you a few clumsy hints. She was as delicate as porcelain. Her hair had the colour and the sheen of polished brass, and her face, when composed, was all innocence and trust. Her innocence was a lure. One felt her sex. In the corner of her lips there lurked a mysterious suggestion of cruelty—or was it of hunger?
Though she chattered a good deal whilst we ate, I felt that she was preoccupied. Whenever Lovelace approached her, she seemed to expand and open like a flower in the sun; whenever he withdrew, she closed in upon herself again. She rarely spoke to him without addressing him by name.
Of the two it was he who interested me most, and after breakfast I sought an opportunity of talking to him.
I asked him about—the best means of getting there, its distance from Athens, and so on.
He answered my questions with politeness, but without deference; his manner was easy, even polished. It was quite evident he was a gentleman, and a gentleman of culture and experience.
I told him that I had recently attended a course of lectures at Oxford on the social life of ancient Athens, and at the word Oxford he started a little and flushed. A minute later I noticed he was trembling and that his cheeks were pale.