"Now you're teasing! If I can't talk without being accused of essay-writing ... I'll hold my tongue."
"Don't be so cross.... Now what about Aunt Thérèse?"
"We won't go.... Well, talk of the devil! Goodness gracious, how small Paris is! A village!"
"Why, what is it, Lot?"
"There's Theo! Theo van der Staff!"
"Theo, Aunt Thérèse's son?"
"Yes. Hullo, Theo! How are you?... How funny that we should meet you!..."
"I didn't know you were in Paris.... Are you on your honeymoon?"
He was a fat little man of over forty, with a round face containing a pair of small, sparkling eyes: they leered at Elly with an almost irresistible curiosity to see the young wife, married but a few days since. A sensuality ever seeking physical enjoyment surrounded him as with a warm atmosphere, jovial and engaging, as though he would invite them presently to come and have a nice lunch with him in a good restaurant and to go on somewhere afterwards. His long residence abroad had imparted a something to his clothes, a something to his speech and gestures that lightened his native Dutch heaviness, rather comically, it is true, because he remained a little elephantine in his grace. Yet his ears pricked up like a satyr's; and his eyes sparkled; and his laughing lips swelled thickly, as though with Indian blood; and his small, well-kept teeth glistened in between. When a woman passed, his quick glance undressed her in a twinkling; and he seemed to reflect, for a second or two.
"We were just speaking of your mother, Theo. Funny that we should meet you," Lot repeated.