“As if I cared just now!” Florence thought to herself. “Imagine being afraid of a young student on a stool, after a thing like that!” She glanced up, then once more felt afraid.
“Fire!” She seemed to hear the Professor say, “Fire destroys all.”
“Yes! Sure!” She seized the astonished young man’s arm. “Sure. Let’s go there. Quick!”
CHAPTER XV
THE INTERPRETER OF DREAMS
“Curiosity,” said the young man as he reached for the mustard, “once killed a cat. But anyway, I’m curious. What about it? Were you winning a bet when you came down that rope?”
They had arrived safely at the little restaurant round the corner. Perched on stools, they were drinking coffee and munching away at small pies for all the world like old pals.
“No, I—” Florence hesitated. He was a nice-appearing young man; his eyes were fine. There was a perpetually perplexed look on his face which said, “Life surprises me.”
“Well, yes,” she said, changing her mind, “perhaps I was winning a bet with—” she did not finish. She had started to say, “a bet with death.” This, she reasoned, would lead to questions and perhaps to the disclosing of facts she wished to conceal.
“What do you do beside reading books on the street at night?” she asked quickly.
“I—why, when I don’t study books I study people,” he replied frankly. “I’m—well, you might call me a psychologist, though that requires quite a stretch of the imagination.” He grinned. Then as a sort of afterthought, he added, “Sometimes I tell people the meaning of their dreams.”