He stopped, corrected, a little confused, and recognised his mistake.
"I have said something wrong, Miss Temple."
She became silent; as it happens at times when one has an unpleasant thought, and from politeness one does not wish to utter it.
"I beg pardon, Miss Temple: I beg pardon frankly. I am thirty-five, but sometimes I am a naughty boy."
Still she was silent, and a little pale.
"Tell me that you forgive me, Miss Temple: tell me that, I beg of you," he exclaimed agitatedly. "You know I am a boy sometimes."
She gave a friendly little nod of the head, but nothing more. And he understood he could ask no more at that moment. They entered the hall; but still there were people round all the little tables where during the day tea was taken. Other couples were seated beneath the thick clumps of green plants; others were further off towards the corners of the immense crypt that reminded one of the monuments of Sesostres and Cleopatra—everywhere a man and a woman. Lucio and Lilian gave a long sweeping glance at the hall, the same glance. They had the same singular expression of fraternal sympathy with the surroundings and the people. They made the same mutual movement in turning and going back to the corridor, seeking together, without saying so or confessing it, a more secluded, solitary spot. After wandering in the corridor for a little in silence, while from the ballroom the call of a very lively two-step reached them, they entered one of the reading-rooms. The hour was late: they only found an old lady there reading a review with silver-rimmed glasses bent over her nose, and a tiny little lace cap on her white hairs. An old gentleman in another corner was reading the "Norddeutsche Zeitung." They neither turned nor raised their heads when Lucio and Lilian entered very quietly and sat down far-away from the two in a corner; she in an arm-chair of dark leather, he in another which he drew much nearer to hers. And their words proceeded in almost a whisper so as not to disturb the two old people who were reading.
"Are you cross with me, Miss Temple?" he asked humbly.
With her little hand she made a polite gesture that he should speak no more of the matter.
"Have you forgotten?"