She pictured what would happen if she acted on this impulse. He would stop the omnibus, pursue her, calling and shouting after her, and, if she was so lucky as to hide herself, he would set the police on her track. The next morning she would be found cowering under an arch asleep, perhaps frozen to death.
At that moment he stretched out his hands, groping for hers, as people in love are wont to do. The shadows dissolved and she responded to his caress, wreathed in smiles. Yet on their arrival at the hotel, where the proprietor, waiters, and commissionaires received them with deferential bows and an effusive welcome, Lilly's thoughts, in the midst of all the bustle, light, and warmth, reverted again to flight.
"I'll say I have left something in the omnibus, run out and never come back."
She was already ascending the stairs on his arm.
A spacious, awe-inspiring apartment swallowed them up. It had a flowered carpet and a glaring three-armed chandelier. In one corner stood a huge wide bedstead, covered with a smooth white damask counterpane. It was carved at the head and foot. She looked round in vain for a second bed. "St. Joseph!" she breathed to herself.
The colonel made himself perfectly at home. He grumbled, turned up the lights, and tossed his overcoat into a corner. Then he lit a cigarette and threw himself down on the sofa, whence he watched with the eye of a connoisseur her movements as she reluctantly took off her coat and drew the pins out of her hat.
There was a knock, and a waiter came in with cold refreshments and a silver-necked bottle on a tray.
"More champagne?" questioned Lilly in alarm. She had not yet recovered from the amount that she had imbibed at midday.
"Nothing like champagne," he said, "to give a little woman courage to consecrate the pretty blue silk négligé waiting in her box to be unpacked."
He poured out the foaming liquid into the two glasses. She clinked glasses with him obediently, but scarcely touched a drop of her wine.