“You find the shops interesting?” I laughed.
“Yes,” she answered. “All women do, I suppose. At least I’ve met very few who, having been in Paris, haven’t hunted for bargains at the Louvre, the Printemps, or the Bon Marché. Paris is worth visiting if only for one’s hats, for you can often buy a hat for twenty francs exactly the same style and of better material than that for which you pay three or four guineas in Regent Street.”
“I’m not much of an expert in such things,” I laughed, nevertheless recollecting how curious it was that Blain remained still in London. Might not his wife and daughter have gone up that day to visit him in his hiding-place?
“But you’ve been awfully queer, I hear,” she said concernedly. “You really don’t look quite yourself even now. What has been the matter? We were all so concerned when we heard about it.”
Our eyes met. In hers there was a deep, earnest look as though she were really solicitous of my welfare, yet I fancied somehow that those clear blue eyes wavered beneath my steady, searching glance. She watched me, reading me as easily as she would have read black letters on a white page.
“I was taken suddenly ill—the heat perhaps,” I answered with affected carelessness. “I had run down, the doctor said. It was nothing very serious.” She gave vent to a perceptible sigh of relief, then smiling sweetly as she ever did, said: “Well, it is indeed a pleasure to welcome you here again to-day.” She still wore that brooch, the quaint little playing-card which had betrayed her visit to Morris Lowry. Its sight sent a strange thrill through me, for I remembered the object of her visit to that dark, dirty, obscure herbalist’s.
“The pleasure is mutual, believe me, Eva,” I answered, putting away from me instantly the gruesome thought oppressing me. “Through this whole month I have thought only of you.”
She sighed, in an instant serious. Then glancing back to assure herself that there were no eavesdroppers, she said, “It would be far better, Mr Urwin—Frank—if you could leave me and forget.”
“But I can’t,” I said, rising quickly and again taking her soft white hand. “You know, Eva, how deeply, how sincerely, how devotedly I love you; how I am entirely yours for ever.”
I spoke simply and directly what I felt; I was calmer than I had been when I rowed her beneath the willows’ shade.