Yes—she was pretty, and more than that, her violet eyes darkening now under his abrupt, almost savage scrutiny. And her voice—it was like a bell just trembling out of silence. Annister spoke:
“Have you been here long—in Dry Bone, I mean?” he asked.
The waitress smiled, and it was not the smile of a waitress, Annister was convinced. Now, with a girl like that for a partner—was his unspoken thought—he could—well....
“N-no, sir,” the girl made answer, with a sudden affectation of primness. “I came in yesterday, sir—on the same train with you, sir. I—I’ve just been—engaged.”
Annister repressed an absurd prompting to ask her how many times she had been engaged before, and to whom and at what. Her eyes were assuredly hypnotic, with lashes long and delicately fine.
“Umm,” he rumbled in answer.
Was it possible, after all, that she had been the girl in the crimson toque? And, with the card in his pocket, for a moment he was tempted to show it to her. Instead:
“Well—I hope you like it here,” he said. “You’ll know me—the next time?”
And for a moment he could have sworn that in the face of the girl there had come all at once a curious, almost a baffling look, at once enigmatic and self-revealing. But the entrance of the vanguard of breakfasters interrupted.
He watched her for a little as with a swaying, lilting step she moved off to minister to the late-comers, his eyes speculative. Then, turning once more to the letter, he re-read it as a man reading a cipher: