She nodded. Even thinking of it brought a lump into her throat. He bent forward, but he did not touch her.
"I meant it, Saralie," he said. "Sometimes men are infatuated, and write what they do not mean. They are sincere at the time, and then later on—But I meant it. I shall always mean it."
Not then, nor during the three days in London, did he so much as take her hand. He was not well. He ate nothing, and at night he lay awake and drank a great deal of water. Once or twice he found her looking at him anxiously, but he disclaimed all illness.
He had known from the beginning what he was doing. But he did not touch her, because in his heart he knew that where once he had been worthy he was no longer worthy. He had left his work for a woman.
It is true that he had expected to go back at once. But the Philadelphia, which had been listed to sail the next day, was held up by a strike in Liverpool, and he waited on, taking such hours as she could give him, feverishly anxious to make her happy, buying her little gifts, mostly flowers, which she wore tucked in her belt and smiled over, because she had never before received flowers from a man.
He was alternately gay and silent. They walked across the Thames by the Parliament buildings, and midway across he stopped and looked long at the stream. And they went to the Zoölogical Gardens, where he gravely named one of the sea lions for Colonel Lilias because of its mustache, and insisted on saluting it each time before he flung it a fish. Once he soberly gathered up a very new baby camel, all legs, in his arms, and presented it to her.
"Please accept it, mademoiselle," he said. "With my compliments."
They dined together every night, very modestly, sitting in some crowded restaurant perhaps, but seeing little but each other. Sara Lee had bought a new hat in London—black, of course, but faced with white. He adored her in it. He would sit for long moments, his elbows propped on the table, his blond hair gleaming in the candlelight, and watch her.
"I wonder," he said once, "if you had never met him would you have loved me?"
"I do love you, Henri."