The coincidence was too strange. She was not more superstitious than most people, though like most people she had an undefined though real belief in premonitions and omens. And in this case the wish was indeed father to the thought. She had been so carried away by the minor success of the ticket in the first instance, and by her mother's plan in the second, that Basil's story seemed almost a direct and miraculous confirmation of her hopes. When they were seated at their accustomed table in the corner of the quiet little restaurant, and a delicious pot au feu was before them, she began to ply her lover with eager questions, making him recount every detail of the previous evening. He told her all that she wished to know, but suddenly she noticed that his face was still sad, and his eyes dreamy and introspective.
She remembered with a pang of accusation what he had been saying about Emile Deschamps.
"Oh, Basil," she said with pretty penitence, "here am I bothering you about last night, and you have not even told me what you were going to about Monsieur Deschamps. You said something had depressed you—some change in him?"
"Well, it has," the young man replied. "When we got home in the early morning to our hotel we neither of us wanted to go to bed, so we lit the stove and sat up in my room. I could not get Emile to say a word. He absolutely refused to discuss the events in the Rue Petite Louise. He scowled at me when I tried to draw him into conversation, as if I were trying to do him some injury. I have never known him like that. After about an hour I lay down on the bed and went to sleep, till they brought our morning coffee.
"About ten we walked to the works together. We have been there all day till just before I came to fetch you. Upon the way Emile was just as moody and brusque as ever. As he did not want to talk about those two kindly little men, I thought I would try another tack, and I began to discuss a detail of our invention. It is an improvement upon what we have already done, and at ordinary times such a thing would never fail to interest him."
"And didn't he rise to that?" Ethel asked.
"Never a bit. And that disturbed me more than ever, for it is so unlike him. All day he has been the same. We usually go to déjeuner together at a little café close to the works. This morning he positively refused to come with me, and, when I asked why, he insulted me. He was like a bear with a sore head."
"And you went alone?"
"Yes, and I have been alone ever since, and have been brooding over the position and got myself into a thoroughly depressed state of mind."