"The old life calls, eh?" (So she construed that equivoque as confirming her surmise; which argued an anxiety to do so. But why?) "You miss something, my friend, in this land where more things are verboten than in Germany before the War?"
"I miss my youth," Lanyard admitted with a rueful laugh—"those misspent years!"
"You would have them back?" she inquisitively demanded. "What for? To misspend them all over again?" He smiled illegibly; she laughed in impish glee. "I felt sure of it, when I thought of you today, Michael, I said to myself: By this time he will be well weary of this country of atrocious cookery, ice-water, and virtue with the indigestion."
"You, then, knew I was still here?"
"One was so informed."
"One has, it seems, friends of whose kind interest one was unaware."
"It was a little bird that told me."
"An idle little bird, if it finds no better gossip to twitter than the tale of my dull days."
"It is truly as I said!" She squeezed his arm. "You are bored. So, then! a little patience and you will call it, as I do, a happy chance that threw me in your way tonight."
"Impossible that one should esteem it otherwise."