“Oh, I am too glad!” he assured her, beamingly. “If it were cannon firing in the next room, it would be nothing to me.” Then, as he continued to gaze with delight at her, an inspiration came to him. “Or is it possible for you to come out? Would you walk a little while, perhaps on the Embankment?”
“I am not particularly busy this morning,” she made indirect answer. Then a digression occurred to her. “But I am rather surprised,” she observed, “to find that England hasn’t made more changes in your speech. I would have expected a perfect Piccadilly accent, but you talk exactly as you did on the train and the boat.”
He laughed and clapped his hands for glee. “It is wholly because I am with you again,” he declared. “Everybody has said for months that the foreign traces had quite vanished from my tongue—but the first glimpse of you—ah! they come instantly back! It is the association of ideas, beyond doubt—that very sweet association,” he added, with trembling softness, “of oh! such fond ideas.”
She had taken up her hat. “We will go out for a little, if you like,” she remarked rather abruptly.
“And I am altogether forgiven?” he demanded in high spirits, as he rose. “You consent to accept the flowers?”
“Heaven only knows what I shall do with them,” she answered, with a grimace of mock despair. “But it was ever so nice of you to get them, and I thank you very much. Oh, I must tell Connie to sprinkle them before I go.”
She moved to the inner door, and as she opened it turned. “Wouldn’t you like to come and see the factory at work?” she inquired, and he joined her with alacrity. “It isn’t much to see at the moment,” she explained, as they entered the large room. “We have nine machines, but only four of them are needed just now. Until after the Jubilee, I’m afraid things will be very dull with publishers and playwrights. However, one must take the lean with the fat.”
Christian looked somewhat nervously about him, while his friend stepped aside to confer with the girl whom he remembered from the early morning. Both this young lady and the three at their machines made a rapid, and as it seemed to him, perfunctory survey of their mistress’s guest, and bent their attention upon their duties again as if his presence signified nothing whatever to them. He suspected that in reality they were plunged in furious speculation concerning him; and this embarrassed him so much that he turned and strolled back toward the open door and even entered the office before Frances rejoined him.
When she came back to him, she took from the table a couple of pale, half-opened tea-rose buds, gave one to him to fix in his lapel and pinned the other to the breast of her fawn-gray frock. “If you are ready,” she said, smilingly, and led the way to the staircase. As she descended before him, he noted the intelligent simplicity of this dress she wore—how it fitted her as gracefully and as artistically as Poole ever fitted Dicky Westland. About her hat, the carriage of her head and shoulders, the free decision of her step, there was something individual which appealed directly to him—a charm which would not be duplicated by any other person in the world. He looked at his watch as he went down, and found with surprise that it was nearly eleven.
He stepped to her side at the street doorway, with a meaning gesture. “Do you remember,” he said, gently—“on the boat you took my arm?”