"So that was her reason," he said presently.
"Of course. Of course. It's the reason for the whole thing. It's the
reason why, when a young man like you sees a young woman like me--I
mean like the lady you thought I was--in an over-stimulating and
tempestuous place like this, instead of taking off his silly hat to
her, he should jam it well down over his silly ears and--quit!"
"You keep on saying 'what I thought you were.' I can't think how I
could, or why I did."
"I know why," she replied serenely. "You fancied I had more
decorations in my back hair than a respectable woman can well
carry."
She meditated.
"I thought I could afford a rose or two. But it seems I couldn't."
"You? You can afford anything--anything. All the same----"
"Well, if I can afford to sit with you, out here, at a quarter past
ten, on this old heathenish piazza, I suppose I can."
"All the same----" he insisted.
She meditated again.
"All the same, if it wasn't those roses, I can't think what it was."
"Dear lady, it wasn't the roses. You are so deadly innocent I think
I ought to tell you what it was."
"Do," she said.
"It was, really, it was seeing you here, walking by yourself. It's
so jolly late, you know."
She drew herself up. "An American woman can walk anywhere, at any
time."
"Oh, yes, of course, of course. But for ordinary people, and in
Latin countries, it's considered--well, a trifle singular."
She smiled.
"You puzzle me," he said. "Just now you seemed perfectly aware of
it. And yet----"
"_And_ yet?" she raised her eyebrows.
"And yet, well--here you are, you know."
"Here I am, and here I've got to stay, it seems. Well--before that?"
"Before that?"
"Before this?" She tapped her foot, impatient at the slow movement
of his thought. "Up there in the hotel?"
"Oh, in the hotel. I suppose it was seeing you with----"
It was positively terrible, the look with which she faced him now.
But his idea was that he had got to help her (hadn't she helped
him?), and he was going through with it. It was permissible; it was
even imperative, seeing the lengths, the depths, rather, of intimacy
that they had gone to.
"Those two," he said. "They don't seem exactly your sort."
"You mean," said she, "they are not exactly yours."