"Very well, then! We may hope to sup in an hour or so. I know you and the making of your toilet!"
"Impertinent!" Max caught him by the arm and pushed him, laughing, toward the door. "Go back and complete the table. I will delay but four—three—two minutes in the making of myself clean."
"But the table is complete—"
"It is incomplete, mon ami; it is without flowers."
Before Blake's objections could form into new words, he found himself in the little hallway with the bedroom door closed upon him, and, being a philosopher, he shook his head contentedly and walked back into the salon, where he obediently brought to light the bowl of jonquils that was still perfuming the air from its dark corner, and set it carefully between the wine and the fruit.
Ten minutes and more slipped by, during which, still philosophical, he walked slowly round and round the table, straightening a candle here, altering a dish there, humming all the while in a not unmusical voice the song from Louise.
He was dwelling fondly upon the line
"Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée"—
when the door of the bedroom was flung open as by a gale, and at the door of the salon appeared Max—his dark hair falling over his forehead, a comb in one hand, a brush in the other.
"Mon cher! a hundred—a thousand apologies for being so long! It is all the fault of my hair!"