He consented with entire good-nature—"As ever, irresistible, Liane!"—and found himself with the woman on his arm rounding the corner and moving toward Sixth avenue. "New York, by what appears, has the honour of entertaining you once again . . ."
"Again? But still, if you please."
"Proving the weakness of deductive reasoning," he observed. "When one saw you in a hired cab, one inferred you were merely a bird of passage."
"But I have never been away, monsieur, never since that luckless voyage landed us here last Spring. I find it amusing, this great town; as Paris is no more, alas! thanks to the War and the poor health of the franc. . . . As for that infamous taxicab, I ask you: what is one to do when one's own car is, as these quaint Americans put it, laid out?"
"Laid up."
"Laid out or laid up—it is all the same."
"I believe you," Lanyard chuckled—"at my age, Liane."
He was aware, but seemed not to be, of sidelong scrutiny, keenly inquisitive.
"Is it that you begin to find yourself bored with this America, Michael?"
"Ah!" he parried—"I must not complain."