"Others appeared to think differently," she replied with a grave admiration that pleased him.
"Then, madam, they can not have seen you," he smiled. Really, the affair was being conducted on correct lines.
She mused for a moment, chin in hand.
"... I think," she said presently, "you must be rather an unusual man." Lionel tried to look as if he disagreed. "Yes, I think so.... And I suppose I owe you my life.... I wonder what reward...."
It must have been the devil that prompted Lionel to say, "One pound, three and sevenpence"; but by an effort he choked back the horrible words, and stammered that he was already repaid.
"No," she demurred, smiling, searching him with her eyes: "that is hardly fair. I wonder if you would like ..." She glanced round. The chemist's back was turned: he was groping for some drug upon the shelves. Lionel was still upon one knee, his face upturned, his eyes drawn as by a magnet. She leaned toward him; her face came closer and closer yet, in her eyes a world of gratitude and fun. Her hair almost brushed his cheek, and he shivered. "I wonder if——" At that moment the chemist turned, and she finished the sentence persuasively, "—if you could get me a cab? I dare not trust my horse again to-day."
Lionel rose stiffly.
"Do you prefer," he asked, fixing the unhappy and bewildered chemist with a glare of anger, "a hansom or a taxi?"
"A taxi, please."
Lionel withdrew. He ordered the coachman, dusty and degraded, to drive home. The policeman, who had salved the discomfiture of his over-throw by hectoring the crowd and cuffing the nearest urchins, obligingly blew his whistle. A minute later a taxi came up.