"With such hips, such a bosom, and such shoulders, the jade must be twenty-eight or nine." And remembering how boldly she had said to him that she liked red men, he thought: "Amusement here.... Nothing needed but time and opportunity—which this Bosnian affair reduces to a minimum." "Gnädiges Fraulein will you not put on your mantel?"
She told him that she was too hot. He insisted, with all the Teuton's dread of chill:
"But it will be cooler in the vestibule, and cooler still when we are driving. Do we not go on to a theatre? I think Lady Wathe has told me so?"
She shrugged her splendid shoulders.
"Nothing so proper. The Jardin des Milles Plaisirs, on the Champs Elysées. We're all dead nuts on seeing the new dance from São Paulo. The thing that has exploded Tango and Maxixe, you know. Look!—the others are moving. Don't let's lose them! No! I won't take your arm. Please carry my wrap with your coat."
"I will put my coat on. Then I shall better carry your mantel."
An attendant deftly hung von Herrnung's thin black, sleeveless garment over his broad shoulders, and gave him his white silk wrap and soft crush felt. He slipped a coin into the man's palm, its small value being instantly reflected in the features of the receiver, and moved towards the swing-doors with Patrine. She said, as a slight block momentarily arrested their progress:
"What are they all jabbering about? Who has been assassinated? What has happened at this place with the crack jaw name? ..."
"Sarajevo..." came in von Herrnung's guttural accent.
"Sarajevo.... Not that I know where it is," said the deep warm voice, that was more like a young man's baritone than a young woman's contralto. And von Herrnung answered, with a renewal of that tingling thrill: