"Against a snow-bank." He added: "The snow is your wonderful skin. And I will bet you four hundred and twenty marks—that is twenty pounds English. Is it agreed? ... Do you not say—Done? ..."
"Twenty pounds...." She shrugged her big white shoulders. "My dear man, I haven't got twenty pounds in this blessed old world!"
He hesitated; finally said with reluctance:
"I will lend you twenty pounds—it will cost you twenty pounds to have your hair done here in Paris.... But you will be sehr schön—the money will be well spent. No? ..."—for she had shaken her head, frowning. "It is offered—why will you not accept?"
"Because I won't.... There are some things I draw the line at. Borrowing money's one of them."
"Then I will bet you my magpie pearl—you may have seen it"—he displayed the ornamented little finger—"against that not-very-good diamond you wear on your left hand."
She burst out laughing and repeated through her laughter: "'Not very good.' I call that insulting.... When it cost me fifteen francs in the Palais Royal. Well, done with you!"
"It is done! But you have not done with me." Von Herrnung's tone had a new note of triumph. He urged: "You go back to London—when? ... The day after to-morrow.... Gut! ... I have myself to visit London upon business—I shall see Isis with her beautiful new hair. One thing more. An address where I may call and see it. Be quick! We turn down here! ..."
Patrine protested, peering with narrowed eyes through the dusk-blue twinkling semi-darkness. "But no! ... That big marquee-thing at the end of this avenue—with all the festoons of lights and the ring of promenade about it—surely that's the Pavilion de la Danse?"
"Halt den Mund!" His hand closed peremptorily on her arm: he hurried her down the trellised vine walk that invited on the left of them, as light measured footsteps padded on the gravel, and a man ran past calling, as it seemed, to somebody ahead: