“Well, I must confess,” he answered, laughing, “that I never thought of dinner at all. I just turned back because things had, as it were, come to an end. The sun set, you know.”
“I heard it strike seven,” she answered him, “and I said Dinner. Although I was down on the beach watching the most wonderful sea you ever saw, nothing could stop me, and so back I came.”
“Have you been down here before?” he asked her. “To stay, I mean.”
“Oh yes. Fred likes it as well as anywhere else, and I like it a good deal better than most. He doesn’t mind so very much, you know, where he is. He’s always living in his books, and so real places don’t count.” She gave a little sigh. “But they do count with me.”
“I’m enjoying it enormously,” he said, “it’s flinging the years off from me.”
“Oh, I know,” she answered, “but I’m almost afraid of it for that very reason. It’s so very—what shall I say—champagney, that one doesn’t know what one will do next. Sometimes one’s spirits are so high that one positively longs to be depressed. Why, you’d be amazed at some of the things people, quite ordinary respectable people, do when they are down here.”
As they turned in at the gate she stopped and laughed.
“Take care, Mr. Maradick,” she said, “I can see that you are caught in the toils; it’s very dangerous for us, you know, at our time of life.”
And she left him, laughing.