"Yours?"
"Yes, I'm feeling quite too fearfully romantic. I'm sure he's looking for me as hard as I am for him. And if I find him I'll keep him."
She saw Gora's long brown hands slowly clench until they looked like steel. She glanced at her own slim white hands. They were quite as strong if more ornamental. She yawned politely.
"I'm not so romantic as sleepy. I know that you must be dead after your journey. They say it's more trouble to travel to Paris from London than from New York. The girls won't be back for a week. You must get your things to-morrow and come out here. I won't hear of your living in Paris discomfort with three two empty rooms."
"That is good of you. Yes, I'll come. And perhaps your landlady, or whatever they call them here, could put me up later. Now that I have come to Paris I intend to see it. I believe some of the great galleries and museums are to be reopened."
"André will arrange it if they're not. How you will enjoy it with your sensitiveness to all the arts. Take this candle in ease the bulb is burnt out. It usually is."
VI
Gora had risen. Her face wore an expression both puzzled and grim; but she and Alexina as they said good-night looked full into each other's eyes without faltering. And Alexina had never looked more ingenuous.
Perhaps that dim idea … that she had thrown down a challenge … had come out in the open for a moment … insolently? … honestly? … She must be completely fagged out after that abominable trip to have such absurd fancies. She took her candle; and disposed herself in Janet's bed, between four walls that gave her an unexpected and heavenly privacy, with a deep sigh of gratitude, dismissing fantasies.