“I know millions,” she said, not without a touch of exaggeration which pleased him. “Would you like to trust yourself to me, put yourself entirely in my hands?”
“I could dream of nothing more enchanting,” replied Martin. “But——”
“But——?”
“I don’t want to make myself an infliction.”
“You’re going to be a delight. You know in the cinematograph how an invisible pencil writes things on the sheet—or how a message is stamped out on the tape, and you look and wonder what’s coming next. Well, I want to see how this country is going to be stamped letter by letter on your virgin mind. It’s a thing I’ve been longing for—to show somebody with sense like yourself, Egypt of the Pharaohs and Egypt of the English. How long can you stay?”
“Indefinitely,” said Martin. “I have no plans.”
“From here you might go to Honolulu or Rangoon?”
“Or Greenland or Cape Horn,” said Martin.
She nodded smiling approval. “That is what I call a free and enlightened Citizen of the World. Let us sit down. I’m waiting for my friend, Mrs. Dangerfield of Philadelphia. Her husband’s here too. You will like them. I generally travel round with somebody, just for the sake of a table-companion. I’m silly enough to feel a fool eating alone every day in a restaurant.”
He drew a wicker chair for her and sat beside her. She deposited parasol and gloves on the little round table, and swept him with a quizzical glance from his well-fitting brown shoes to his trim black hair.