Whatever may have been the dream she was following, she dismissed it upon hearing his step, strangely familiar. She did not rise, but she extended her hand, a grave inquiry in her slumbrous eyes. With equal gravity he clasped the hand, but held back the impulse to kiss it. He was not quite sure of himself just then. He sat down opposite her and, smiling, whimsically inquired:
"Now, where did we leave off?"
At first she did not understand.
He enlightened her. "I refer to that Arabian Nights entertainment in New York. Where did we leave off that interesting discussion?"
She smiled brightly. "We shall take up the thread of that discourse with the coffee."
"Why not countermand the order for dinner? I am not hungry."
"But I am," she replied. She was wholly herself now. The tact with which he began his address disembarrassed her. For two days, since she despatched the telegram, she had lived in a kind of ecstatic terror; she had even regretted the message, once it was beyond recall. "I am human enough to be hungry, sometimes." She summoned the waiter.
The dinner was excellent, but Hillard scarcely knew what this or that plate was. All his hunger lay in his eyes. Besides, he did not want to discuss generalities during the intermittent invasions of the waiter, who never knew how many times he stood in danger of being hurled over into the flowering beds of lavender which banked the path of the second terrace. And when he brought the coffee and lingered for further orders, it was Hillard who dismissed him, rather curtly.
"Now! Let me see," he said musingly. "We had agreed that it would be best never to meet again, that to keep the memory of that night fresh in our minds, a souvenir for old age, it were wisest to part then. Well, we can keep the memory of it for our old age; it will be a little secret between us, and we shall talk it over on just such nights as this."
"Isn't this oak the most beautiful you have ever seen?" she remarked, looking up at the great leafy arms above her head.