“He’d follow you by the next boat.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“You’re not half so vain as I thought you were.”
“When we are alone he never attempts to make love to me. We talk platitudes. I know him no better than I did before.”
“He’s a wary bird. But the dawn must come and with it his crow.”
“Well, Dick, I tell you frankly that I may go back to Paris any day.”
“I knew you were nervy to-night. I wish I could find a woman who was a match for a man in the nervous system. But there isn’t one. That’s why we are so superior. We’ve got steel where you’ve all got fiddle strings. Raoul!”
He drank again and ate heartily. He was a voracious eater at times. But there were days when he ate nothing and worked incessantly.
They had begun dinner late, and the little restaurant was getting empty. Three sets of diners had gone out since they had sat down. The waiters were clearing some of the tables. A family party, obviously French, lingered at a round table in the middle of the room over their coffee. A pale man sat alone in a corner eating pressed duck with greedy avidity. And Raoul, leaving Miss Van Tuyn and Garstin, placed a large vase of roses on a table close to the window near the door.
Miss Van Tuyn happened to see this action, and a vagrant thought slipped through her mind. “Then we are not the last!”