The wide thoroughfare was deserted save for an occasional straggler making his weary way home after a day spent in ministering to the wants and the pleasures of the strangers who now crowded the city….
How wise he, Gerald Burton, was now showing himself to be in thus spending the short summer night out-of-doors, à la belle étoile, as the French so charmingly put it, instead of in some stuffy, perhaps not overclean, little room!
But soon his mind swung back to the strange events of the past day!
Already Nancy Dampier's personality held a strange, beckoning fascination for the young American. He hadn't met many English girls, for his father far preferred France to England, and it was to France they sped whenever they had time to do so. And Gerald Burton hadn't cared very much for the few English girls he had met. But Nancy was very, very different from the only two kinds of her fellow countrywomen with whom he had ever been acquainted—the kind, that is, who is closely chaperoned by vigilant mother or friend, and the kind who spends her life wandering about the world by herself.
How brave, how gentle, how—how self-controlled Mrs. Dampier had been! While it was clear that she was terribly distressed, and all the more distressed by the Poulains' monstrous assertion that she had come alone to the Hôtel Saint Ange, yet how well she had behaved all that long day of waiting and suspense! How anxious she had been to spare the Burtons trouble.
Not for a single moment had he, Gerald Burton, felt with her as he so often felt with women—awkward and self-conscious. Deep in his inmost heart he was aware that there were women and girls who thought him very good-looking; and far from pleasing him, the knowledge made him feel sometimes shy, sometimes even angry. He already ardently wished to protect, to help, to shelter Mrs. Dampier.
Daisy had been out of the room for a moment, probably packing his bag, when he had come back tired and weary from his fruitless quest, and Mrs. Dampier, if keenly disappointed that he had no news, had yet thanked him very touchingly for the trifling trouble, or so it now seemed, that he had taken for her.
"I don't know what I should have done if it hadn't been for your kind father, for your sister, and—and for you, Mr. Burton."
He walked across the bridge leading to the Champs Elysées, paced round the Arc de Triomphe, and then strolled back to the deserted quays. He had no wish to go on to the Boulevards. It was Paris asleep, not Paris awake, with which Gerald Burton felt in close communion during that short summer night.
And how short is a Paris summer night! Soon after he had seen the sun rise over an eastern bend of the river, the long, low buildings which line the Seine below the quays stirred into life, and he was able to enjoy a delicious, a refreshing plunge in the great swimming-bath which is among the luxuries Paris provides for those of her sons who are early-morning toilers.