"And you like it?"
"It's heavenly! How good this soup is. But what a waste it seems to put all that ice round the champagne. Ice is so dreadfully expensive. You get hardly any for fourpence at our fishmongers."
But it was the mayonnaise with its elaborate decoration that intrigued her most.
Words failed at the luscious sight and it was a sheer joy to watch her.
"Oh, what a pig I am!" she said, after her second helping, with her flashing, radiant smile, "but it was too perfectly sweet for anything."
The champagne and excitement had tinted her cheeks exquisitely, it was as though a few drops of red wine had been poured into a glass of clear crystal water. With little appetite himself, Lothian watched her eat with intense pleasure in her youth and health. His depression had gone, he seemed to draw vitality from her, to be informed with something of her own pulsing youth. He became quite at his best, and how good that was, not very many people knew.
It was his hour, his moment, every sense was flattered and satisfied. He was dining with the prettiest girl in the room, people turned to look at her. She hung on his words and was instantly appreciative. A full flask of poison was by his side, he could help himself without let or hindrance. Her innocence of what he was doing—of what it was necessary for him to do to remain at concert-pitch—was supreme. No one else knew or would have cared twopence if they did.
He was witty, in a high courtly way. The hour of freakish fun was over, and his shrewd insight into life, his poetic and illuminating method of statement, the grace and kindliness of it all held the girl spellbound.
And well it might. His nerves, cleared and tempered, telegraphed each message to his brilliant, lambent brain with absolute precision.
There was an entire co-ordination of all the reflexes.