“You must,” said Carla, “call me up and we’ll get together. I’m staying at the Mason.”
“I shall, of course. Tell me....” At this moment Mrs Raymond Stevanson appeared to capture Laura.
“Laura, darling, I’ve got the most marvelous Estonian who wants to meet you. I think he said he was an Estonian. I know you’ll love him. You’ll excuse me, I know.” She said this last to Carla and Holton.
“We’ll have lunch,” said Laura, calling back over her shoulder as she was borne away by the conquering Mrs Stevanson.
“What did you think of her, Bob?” asked Carla.
“She’s not as pretty as I thought she’d be.”
“They never are; you must learn that.”
He looked at her and she tried to tell what he was thinking but for once her intuition was not enough: she had first to examine the years that had gone by. She had to find some trace of familiar emotion in him. She had to rediscover the stranger. She had to make him remember what she remembered. In Florence he had loved her, she was sure of that. Now it was up to her to reconstruct a passion that had never been wholly lost. She had cared more for him than he had known then; would ever know, she hoped. There had been so many nights after he had left when she had longed to be with him, nights when she could feel again the warm summer about them as they lay together in the wide bed in her room. She was determined now to find the lover in the stranger that stood beside her, who stood looking seriously but remotely into her face.
“Shall we sit down now, Bob?”