“A rum crowd!” thought Bertram, but to his sister he said, “I’ll come to-night at ten, if that’s not too late?”
“Any time before midnight, or afterwards,” said Susan, smiling for the first time. “They’re all talkers. You’ll learn a lot, if you’re not too aggressively English.”
“Joyce thinks I’m not English enough,” he answered, and at the name of Joyce Susan’s black eyes flashed, and her mouth hardened. She remembered that scene with the telephone—the prelude of tragedy.
“Au revoir, then. Until this evening.”
She fell in with the crowd of business men, midinettes, students, Americans, school-girls, who passed unceasingly through the little iron gates which led down to the “Metro” tubes.
Bertram lunched alone at a terrasse restaurant, on the other side of the river in the Boulevard St. Michel. A French girl sat opposite, at the same little table, and entered into conversation.
“Anglais?”
“Oui. Vous voyez!”
“Pas Americain, alors!”
“Moitié Anglais, moitié Irlandais, pour le dire précisément.”