“Painted it,” said Clementina, throwing forward both her hands in triumph.
One of her hands met the long glass of coffee and sent it scudding across the table. Quixtus instinctively jerked his chair backward, but he could not escape a great splash of coffee over his waistcoat. Full of delight, gratitude, and dismay, Clementina whipped up her white cotton gloves and before waiters with napkins could intervene, she wiped him comparatively dry.
“Your gloves! Your gloves!” he cried, protesting.
She held up the unspeakable things and almost laughed as she threw them on the pavement, whence they were picked up carefully by a passing urchin—for nothing is wasted in France.
“I would have wiped you clean with my—well, with anything I’ve got, in return for your having remembered my picture.”
“Well,” said he, “the compliment being quite unconscious, was all the more sincere.”
The waiter mopped up the flooded table.
“Let us be depraved,” said Clementina in high good humour, “and have some green chartreuse.”
“Willingly,” smiled Quixtus.
So they were depraved.