"If ever we meet again, we meet as strangers." Well, he had kept to the
very letter of that bidding, and she had been angry. He had been very
glad to see that she was angry. But now, face to face for an hour and a
half--for he knew the distance to Sluys well enough--could he keep
silence still and yet avoid being ridiculous? He did not intend to be
ridiculous; yet even this might have happened. But Elizabeth saved him.
She raised her chin and spoke in chill, distant courtesy.
"I think you must be English, because I saw you at the 'Panier d'Or';
everyone's English there. I can't make these people understand anything.
Perhaps you could be so kind as to tell me how long the boat takes to
get to wherever it does get to?"
It was a longer speech than she would have made had he been the stranger
as whom she proposed to treat him, but it was necessary to let him
understand at the outset what was the part she intended to play.
He did understand, and assumed his role instantly.
"Something under two hours, I think," he said politely, still holding in
his hand the hat he had removed on the instant of her breaking silence.
"How cool and pleasant the air is after the town!" The boat was moving
now quickly between grassy banks topped by rows of ash trees. The
landscape on each side spread away like a map intersected with avenues
of tall, lean, wind-bent trees, that seemed to move as the boat moved.
"Good!" said she to herself; "he means to talk. We shan't sit staring at
each other for two hours like stuck pigs. And he really doesn't know me?
Or is it the wife? Oh! I wish I'd never come to this horrible country!"
Aloud she said, "Yes, and how pretty the trees and fields are--"
"So--so nice and green, aren't they?" said he.