"Where they serve music and syrup and little hard cakes, and you carry away the impression of a lordly function because of the scenery and the manners? Indeed yes!"
"I slid away after a while, out upon the iron balcony, filled with new lilacs, that overhung the garden. Something had hurt my little feelings; a letter hadn't come, perhaps. I remember how dark and warm the night was, like a gulf under me, and the stars and the lights of Paris seemed very much alike and rather disappointing. Then I heard his voice behind me, and I was as overwhelmed as—as Daphne or Danaë or one of those pagan ladies might have been when the god came.
"He said, 'What are you doing, hanging over this dark, romantic chasm?'
And I just had presence of mind enough to play up.
"'Naturally, I'm waiting for a phantom lover.' Then the answer to that flashed on me and I said in a hurry, 'I thought you never came to these things.'
"'I came to see you'—he really said it—and then, 'And—am I sufficiently demoniacal?' And he had swallowed a pigeon.
"'Oh dear, no!' said I. 'You are much too respectable. You are from
Boston.'
"'And you from Virginia,' said he. 'I hear that a certain Stewart once unjustifiably claimed kinship with your branch of the family and has since been known as the Pretender.'
"'That is quite true,' said I. 'And I hear that once when the Ark ran aground a little voice was heard piping: 'Save me! save me! I am a Fowler of Boston!'
"That was the silly way we began. Isn't it incredible?"
"He could be silly—that was one of the lovable things," Hugh mused. "And he could say the most nakedly natural things. But he generally used the mandarin dialect. He thought in it, I suppose."