"But I don't want to try you," Lawrence responded.
"Perhaps it's just because you're a man, dear," she said lightly, but still with the sweet warm look in her eyes.
"Then I fear I can't help it if the trouble is so deep-seated as that." There was an ardent strain below the lightness in his voice. "Prue," he added, in a half whisper, laughing slightly, "if we were not on the water-battery I'm almost certain I should kiss you."
"On the Plaza, for instance?" she asked, with a raising of the brows. "I suppose we look quite ridiculous, as it is. Please throw my mantle over our hands; that is, if you insist on keeping my hand in yours."
Lawrence flung the gray wrap over their clasped hands. He began to talk gaily. Suddenly he ceased speaking. Group after group had gone past them as they sat there, but now a man in white pantaloons, with a blue coat over a white rowing jersey, came walking over the battery. This man was middle-aged, swarthy, with a heavy black, carefully kept beard, and black eyes with a puffiness beneath them. He came up hat in hand.
"Of course I know I'm de trop, Mrs. Lawrence," he said, easily; "but then a man may decide to be even that for the sake of a word with you."
He nodded at Lawrence, who bowed with extreme distance in return, and who altogether had a look, as his wife informed him later, of wishing to rise and throw this newcomer into the sea.
"Only you'd have had a terrible armful, dear," she concluded, with a laugh and a glint of the eyes.
Having spoken thus, Mr. Meramble calmly sat down on the other side of Mrs. Lawrence and asked her if she didn't think he had rowed by in excellent form. Whereupon they entered into a brisk talk about rowing and yacht-racing and kindred topics.
Lawrence grew more and more glum, and at last rose and said he believed he would go back to the Ponce.