He was dreadfully hungry; the wine was mild and delicious, the crisp cakes heavenly, and he ate and ate in a kind of ecstasy, not perfectly certain what was thrilling him most deeply, the wine or the cakes or this slender maid's fresh young beauty.
On one rounded cheek a bar of sunlight lay, gilding the delicate skin and turning the curling strands of hair to coils of fire.
He thought to himself, with his mouth a trifle fuller than convention expects, that he would not wish to resist falling in love with a girl like this. She would never have to chase him very far. . . . In fact, he was perfectly ready to be captured and led blushing to the altar.
Once, as he munched away, he remembered the miserable fate of his late companion Vance, and shuddered; but, looking around at the young girl beside him, his fascinated eyes became happily enthralled, and matrimony no longer resembled doom.
"What are these strange happenings in New York of which I hear vague rumours?" she enquired, folding her hands in her lap and looking innocently at him.
"Have you heard about—what is going on in town?" he asked. "I thought you didn't know."
"They say that the women there are ambitious to govern the country and are even resolved to choose their own husbands."
"Something of that sort," he muttered uneasily.
"That is a very strange condition of affairs," she murmured, brooding eyes remote.