He proposed a taxi-cab to the Bois—he had visited the Mont de Piété—but the Lady would not hear of it; she was used to walking; she was a good walker; she liked to walk.
“But it’s miles,” Cartaret protested.
“It is nothing,” said she.
Her utmost concession was to go by tram to the Arc.
It was a beautiful day in the Bois, with half of Paris there: carriages from the Faubourg St. Germain, motors of the smart set, hired conveyances full of tourists. The trees were a tender green; the footways crowded by the Parisian bourgeois, making a day of it with his family. Slim officers walked, in black jackets and red trousers, the calves of their legs compressed in patent-leather riding-leggings; women of the half-world showed brilliant toilettes that had been copied by ladies of the haut monde, who, driven past, wore them not quite so well. Grotesquely clipped French poodles rode in the carriages, and Belgian police-dogs in the automobiles; thin-nosed collies frolicked after their masters; here and there a tailless English sheep-dog waddled by, or a Russian boar-hound paced sedately; children played on the grass and dashed across the paths with a suddenness that threatened the safety of the adult pedestrians.
Cartaret led the way into the less frequented portions of the great park beyond the Lac Inférieur. The Lady was pleasantly beside him, Chitta unpleasantly at his heels.
“Don’t you admit it’s worth coming to see?” he began in English. “When I was here, under the stars, the other night——”
“You must speak French,” the Lady smilingly interrupted. “You must remember my promise to Chitta.”
Cartaret ground his teeth. He spoke thereafter in French, but he lowered his voice so as to be sure that Chitta could not understand him.
“I was thinking then that you ought to see it.” He took his courage in both hands. “I was wishing very much that you were with me.” His brown eyes sought hers steadily. “May I tell you all that I was wishing?”