"That would be great stuff," he admitted.
"Fancy the immaculately attired Count Torriani hoeing a garden," she laughed. "But I can't fancy it—it requires too much imagination for such a warm day. Moreover, I am hungry, kind sir. Could you possibly give me a lobster dinner somewhere about here? I should love it."
He sprang up at once with an exclamation of assent. They dressed in their respective bath-houses. Later they dined slowly and satisfactorily at the Hotel Nassau and started back for New York in the sultry dusk of the summer evening. The salt tang was heavy in the air. A slight breeze was making fitful efforts to blow in toward them from the sea. Most of the day-time sojourners at Long Beach had already departed for apartment house dinners and engagements in town; the night crowd had not yet arrived. The roads were, in consequence, comparatively deserted.
They spun along in silence for half an hour or more. Then she said quietly, "You have not tried to make love to me at all, have you?"
His hand trembled slightly on the wheel and he pretended not to have heard her.
"Do you then find me less attractive than you once did, Rodrigo?" she asked.
"You are very beautiful," he said gravely, without looking at her. "But you happen now to be the wife of my best friend."
"In the suburban community in which we reside, it is considered quite au fait to flirt with one's friends' wives," she offered with simulated innocence.
"Really?" he countered. "But I am just a conventional New Yorker."
She had edged closer to him and the attraction of her presence was undeniable. But when, after several minutes, he showed no inclination to pursue the theme, she slumped into the seat away from him and said coolly, "You may drop me at my aunt's. I have an engagement with her to attend some fearful concert or other. Unless you would care to drive me all the way to Greenwich."