“I was seven years saving up for this trip—you see, I can’t do a thing like this on a cheap scale—I mean I haven’t the ability. Suppose we say 1919—that’s a nice-sounding year.”
“Really?”
She was very sympathetic.
“Really,” he mocked her seriousness.
“And if we stayed over we could take a week to it.”
The dinner moved slowly. They were within a five-minutes’ drive of the steamer and the faithful Louis Napoleon was outside on guard, but Richard kept his watch before him. Meanwhile the lady aimed to prove how easy it would be to miss the boat, have the ticket-money refunded, and do the proper thing by the Museo.
The idea grew in his own mind as the minutes ticked nearer to the fateful nine o’clock.
“You could stay in one of those Woman’s League pensions,” he mused, “while I lived at a nearby hotel.”
She baited him with alluring arguments, exactly in keeping, he might have thought, with those village qualities which, he had observed, were part of her charm. Undoubtedly, he noted her seeming artlessness.
At eight and three-quarters he rose briskly, walked to the curb, and openly paid and dismissed the faithful coachman.