"And now," said Molly, "tell me all about George and how you came to know one another and what you thought of him when you first saw him and what he likes for breakfast and what he talks about and what he said about me."
4
It might have been expected that the passage of time, giving opportunity for quiet reflection on the subject of the illogical nature of the infatuation in which he had allowed himself to become involved, would have brought remorse to so clear and ruthless a thinker as Hamilton Beamish. It was not so, but far otherwise. As Hamilton Beamish sat in the ante-chamber of Madame Eulalie's office next day, he gloried in his folly: and when his better self endeavoured to point out to him that what had happened was that he had allowed himself to be ensnared by a girl's face—that is to say, by a purely fortuitous arrangement of certain albuminoids and fatty molecules, all Hamilton Beamish did was to tell his better self to put its head in a bag. He was in love, and he liked it. He was in love, and proud of it. His only really coherent thought as he waited in the ante-room was a resolve to withdraw the booklet on "The Marriage Sane" from circulation and try his hand at writing a poem or two.
"Madame Eulalie will see you now, sir," announced the maid, breaking in upon his reverie.
Hamilton Beamish entered the inner room. And, having entered it, stopped dead.
"You!" he exclaimed.
The girl gave that fleeting pat at her hair which is always Woman's reaction to the unexpected situation. And Hamilton Beamish looking at that hair emotionally, perceived that he had been right in his yesterday's surmise. It was, as he had suspected, a gleamy mass, sparkling with life and possessing that incomparable softness, freshness and luxuriance.
"Why, how do you do?" said the girl.
"I'm fine," said Hamilton Beamish.
"We seem fated to meet."