But when they had crossed over and got into the comparative quiet of the Park, she resolutely returned to her English again; and now she was telling him about the people in Naples
whom he used to know, and of their various fortunes and circumstances. Sometimes neither of them spoke; for all this around them was very still and pleasant—the fresh foliage of the trees and the long lush grass of the enclosures as yet undimmed by the summer dust; the cool shadows thrown by the elms and limes just moving as the wind stirred the wide branches; altogether a world of soft, clear, sunny green, unbroken except by here and there a small copper beech with its bronze leaves become translucent in the hot light. It is true that the browsing sheep were abnormally black; and the yellow-billed starlings had perhaps less sheen on their feathers than they would have had in the country; nevertheless, for a park in the midst of a great city this place was very quiet and beautiful and sylvan; and indeed, when these two sat down on a couple of chairs under a fragrant hawthorn, Nina's lustrous dark eyes became wistful and absent, and she said,
"Yes, Leo, it is as you say in the house—it all appears a dream."
"What appears like a dream to you?" her companion asked.
"To be in London, sitting with you, Leo, and hearing you speak," she answered, in a low voice. "Often I think of it—often I think of London—wondering what it is like—and I ask myself, 'Will Leo be the same after his great renown? Are we friends as before?' and now I am here, and London is not dark and terrible with smoke, but we sit in gardens—oh, very beautiful!—and Leo is talking just as in the old way—perhaps it is a dream?" she continued, looking up with a smile. "Perhaps I wake soon?"
"Oh, no, it isn't a dream, Nina," said he, "only it might pass for one, for you haven't told me how you managed to get here. It is all a mystery to me. Where are you staying, for example?"
"My lodging?" she said. "I have an apartment in the Restaurant Gianuzzi."
"Where is that?"
"Rupert Street," she answered, with a valiant effort at the proper pronunciation.
"My goodness! what are you doing, Nina?" he said, almost angrily. "Living by yourself in a foreign restaurant, in the neighborhood of Leicester Square! You'll have to come out of that at once!"