Warner had to laugh.
"You are rather a terrifying psychologist," he said. "You almost make me believe I have a streak of romance in me."
"Oh, we all have that, Warner. We call it by other names—cleverness, logic, astuteness, intelligence—but we all have it in us, and it is revealed in every man who marries a woman for love.... Believe me, no normal man ever lived who was not, at some brief moment in his life, in love with some woman. Maybe he ignored it and it never came again; maybe he strangled it and went on about more serious business; maybe it died a natural but early death. But once, before he died, he must have had a faint, brief glimpse of it. And that was the naissance of the latent germ of romance in him—ephemeral, perhaps, but inevitably to be born before it died."
Warner waved his whip and snapped it maliciously:
"So you have been in love, have you?"
"Why? Because I, also, am suspiciously eloquent?"
"That's the reason—according to you."
Halkett smiled slightly.
"Perhaps I have been," he said.... "Hello! Is this your inn?" as they drew up before the lighted windows of a two-story building standing close to the left-hand edge of the highway, under the stars.
"Here we are at the Golden Peach," nodded Warner, as the door opened and a smiling peasant lad came out with a: "Bon soir, Monsieur Warner! Bon soir, messieurs!" And he took the horse's head while they descended.