They had quite five minutes and, no other sight-seers being about, they were quite alone. Below them, under a faintly blue haze, Paris lay like an outspread map, with here and there a church steeple rising above the level of the page. The roof of the Opéra, the gilt dome of Napoleon’s tomb and the pointing finger of the Tour Eiffel were immediately individualized, but all the rest of the city merged into a common maze about the curving Seine with the red sun setting beyond the Ile de Puteaux.
Vitoria leaned on the rampart. She was panting a little from her climb; her cheeks were flushed, and her whole face glowing.
“It is as if we were gods on some star,” she said, “looking down upon a world that is strange to us.”
She was speaking in English. Cartaret bent closer. Pledges of mere friendship ceased, for the moment, to appear of primary importance: he wanted, suddenly, to make the most of a little time.
“Am I never to see you alone?” he asked.
She forsook the view of Paris to give him a second’s glance. There was something roguish in it.
“Chitta,” she said, “has not yet arrived.”
He felt himself a poor hand at love-making. Its language was upon his tongue—perhaps the slower now because he so much meant what he wanted to say. His jaw set, the lines at his mouth deepened.
“I’ve never thought much,” he blundered, “about some of the things that most fellows think a lot about. I mean I’ve never—at least not till lately—thought much about love and—” he choked on the word—“and marriage; but——”
She cut him short. Her speech was slow and deliberate. Her eyes were on his, and in them he saw something at once firm and sad.