“I’m going to try that horse,” she said with deliberate friendliness. “To see if I’ll buy him. Are you a judge of a horse?”
“I fear not, Madame.”
She had spoken in English and he replied in the same language. She was standing at the head of the stairs holding her whip lightly in her right hand. Her splendid figure was defined by the perfectly-fitting, plain habit, and she saw him look at it with a strange expression in his eyes, an admiration that was almost ferocious, and that was yet respectful and even pure. It was like the glance of a passionate schoolboy verging on young manhood, whose natural instincts were astir but whose temperament was unwarped by vice; a glance that was a burning tribute, and that told a whole story of sex and surely of hot, inquiring ignorance—strange glances of a man no longer even very young. It made something in her leap and quiver. She was startled and almost angered by that, but not by the eyes that caused it.
“Au revoir,” she said, turning to go down.
“May I—might I see you get up?” said Androvsky.
“Get up!” she said.
“Up on the horse?”
She could not help smiling at his fashion of expressing the act of mounting. He was not a sportsman evidently, despite his muscular strength.
“Certainly, if you like. Come along.”
Without thinking of it she spoke rather as to a schoolboy, not with superiority, but with the sort of bluffness age sometimes uses good-naturedly to youth. He did not seem to resent it and followed her down to the arcade.