"I will give them to you when you are safely back at Ivry," he said, "and not one moment before. I am sure Sir George would agree with me that they are too valuable for a young girl to wear under the circumstances. I will give you my word, if it is worth anything to you."
"And if I will not take it?"
"It would make no difference," he replied imperturbably, and leaned over to replenish the fire.
Sir George slept on noisily; the drip in the corner had become a splash; my white satin slippers before the fire were drying into limp shapelessness. The man in tweeds on the floor raised himself into a sitting position and listened, his hands clasped about his knees.
(Knickers with a man are like décolletage with a woman, only to be worn by the elect. Mother wishes me to cut this out, because she says this story is to be read by young persons. But the modern young person is really awfully sophisticated. Sometimes I feel as though mother is a mere child, compared to me.)
After a time the man in knickers who was one of the elect dropped on his elbow and began to talk again, looking into the fire.
"Rum affair altogether, isn't it?" he said chattily. "Nature having a spasm outside, half a dozen lady votaries of the vote having spasms up at the house, the—er—Premier of Great Britain, on whose possessions the sun never sets, having apoplexy on a packing-case. And out of all this chaos a moment like this: you and I alone here, where I could reach out my hand and touch you—if I dared——" he supplemented as I straightened. "You see, you have gone to my head. You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen."
One could tell that, however low he had fallen, he had been properly raised—although I think firelight is always becoming, especially with a white gown.
Here Sir George began to rouse. He coughed huskily, sat up and looked around him in a daze, and then stretched out his legs and groaned.
"Gad!" he said with a deep breath, "I hoped I had dreamed it." He looked at us both as if to establish our reality, and, reaching over, began to struggle into his shrunken boots.