“No.”
“Well,” I said, “do not go out of the hotel until I arrive, will you?”
“Not if you wish me to remain in,” was her reply; and then, promising I would be with her at the earliest moment, as I wished to see her on a matter of gravest importance, I rang off. Half an hour afterwards I paid my bill, even though it were the middle of the night, and going out to the garage, started my engine, and with my bag in the back of the car sped away in: the drizzling rain eastward out of Bath.
I chose the road through Norton St. Philip, Warminster, and Wilton to Salisbury, where I had an early breakfast at the old White Hart, and then, striking south, I went by Downton Wick and Fordingbridge, through Ringwood and Christchurch, past the grey old abbey church and on through suburban Boscombe until, just after nine o’clock, I pulled up before the big entrance to the Bath Hotel in Bournemouth.
Into the pretty palm-court, where I waited, Asta, my lost love, came at last with outstretched hand, smiling me a welcome greeting. She looked dainty in blue serge skirt and muslin blouse, and there being no one else in the place at that early hour,—the idlers not yet having arrived to read the papers and novels,—we sat together in a corner to chat.
By the pallor of her soft, delicate countenance, I saw that she was nervous and troubled, though she showed a brave front, and affected a gay lightheartedness that was only feigned.
“Tell me, Miss Seymour,” I said presently, bending to her very seriously, “what happened to you on that night in Aix?”
“Happened!” she echoed, her dark eyes opening widely. “Ah! It was, indeed, a narrow escape. Had Dad not provided himself with a key to the back stairs in readiness for emergencies, we should have both been arrested—just as you were.”
“Yes,” I smiled. “But I was released. What happened to you?”
“We caught the Paris express—only just as it was leaving; but Dad, fearing that our flight had been telephoned to Paris, decided to get out at Laroche, where we stopped to change engines, and from there we took train by Troyes and Nancy to Strassbourg. Then, once in Germany, we could, of course, escape Tramu’s attentions,” and she smiled.