“So late?”
“I thought you’d left Paris!” She had no information of this sort, but was inclined to rebuke him for not leaving Paris.
“I? Who told you that, I should like to know. I shall never leave Paris; at least⸺”
There was heavy enigmatic meaning in this, said lightly. It did not escape her, sensible to such nuances.
“How are our fair friends?” he asked.
“Our? Oh, Fräulein Lipmann and—Oh, I haven’t seen them since the other night.”
“Indeed! Not since the other night⸺?”
She made her silence swarm with significant meanings, like a glassy shoal with innumerable fish: her eyes even, stared and darted about, glassily.
It was very difficult, now she had stopped, to get away. The part she had more or less played with her friends, of his champion, had imposed itself on her. She could not leave her protégé without something further said. She was flattered, too, at his showing no signs now of desire to escape.
His more plainly brutal instincts woke readily in these vague days. Various appetites had been asserting themselves. So the fact that she was a pretty girl did its work on a rather recalcitrant subject. He felt so modest now, ideals things of the past. Surely for a quiet ordinary existence pleasant little distinctions were suitable?