"I used to go there when I was poor."
She entered eagerly into the adventure, and ordered her car to wait. Then away they fared around the corner!
Within the homely little restaurant, Marie-Louise's elegance was more than ever apparent. Her long coat of gray velvet with its silver fox winked opulently from the back of her chair at the coarse table-cloth and the paper napkins.
But the soup was good, and the German woman smiled at them, and brought them a special dish of hard almond cakes with their coffee.
"I love it," Marie-Louise said. "It is like Hans Andersen and my fairy books. Will you bring me here again, Dr. Richard?"
"I am glad you like it," he told her. "I wanted you to like it."
"I like it because I like you," she said with frankness, "and you seem to belong in the fairy tale. You are so big and strong and young. I don't feel a thousand years old when I am with you. You are such a change from everybody else, Dr. Dicky."
Richard spoke the next day to Austin of Marie-Louise and the fat Armenian. "She shouldn't be going to such shops alone. She has a romantic streak in her, and they take advantage of it."
"She ought never to go alone," Austin agreed, "and I have told her. But what am I going to do? I can rule a world of patients, Brooks, but I can't rule my woman child," he laughed ruefully. "I've tried having a maid accompany her, but she sends her home."
"I wish she might have gone to the Crossroads school, and have known the Crossroads teacher—Anne Warfield. You remember Cynthia Warfield, sir; this is her granddaughter."