Steven patted him on the arm. “You’re just the same,” he said, “exactly the silly old Monty I used to know. Next time you see your charmer, risk being impertinent and ask her to marry you. Women hate modesty nowadays. It’s just a confession of failure and we’re all hitched up to success. I don’t know the girl you are speaking of but when you get home again instead of declaring your great unworthiness, tell her you’ve left Paris and its pleasures simply to marry her. Say that the Bourse begged you to remain and guide the nation through a financial panic, but you left them weeping and flew back on a fast Cunarder.”
“I believe you are right,” Monty said. “I’ll do it. I ought to have done it years ago. Alice is frightfully disappointed with me.”
“Who is Alice?” the other demanded. “The lady you’re crossing with on the Mauretania?”
“Yes,” said Monty. “A good pal of mine; one of those up-to-date women of the world who know what to do and say at the right moment. She’s a sort of elder sister to me. You’ll like her, Steve.”
Denby doubted it but pursued the subject no further. He conceived Alice to be one of those capable managing women who do so much good in the world and give so little pleasure.
“What are you doing in Paris now?” Monty presently demanded. It occurred to him that it was odd that Denby, too, should be in the city now.
“Writing a book on the Race Courses of the World,” he said, smiling. “I am now in the midst of Longchamps.”
Monty looked at him doubtfully. He had never known that his friend had any literary aspirations, but he did remember him as one who, if he did not choose to tell, would invent airy fairy fancies to deceive.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“You are quite right,” Denby admitted. “You’ve got the key to the mystery. I’ll confess that I have been engaged to guard Mona Lisa. Suspicious looking tourists such as you engage my special attention. Don’t get offended, Monty,” he added, “I’m just wandering through the city on my way to England and that’s the truth, simple as it may seem. I was desolate and your pleasing countenance as you bought a franc’s worth of north wind was good to see. I wondered if you’d remember me.”