This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
XI

Of course, I wanted a minute, and much more than that, with her; but how were we to have it?

She had not assimilated, I thought, her realization of her situation. She left the table, as though she were free to walk off and I free to accompany her. I arose and followed. No one hindered; and I caught step with her at the end of the terrace where she led me upon a path under the trees.

Still no one interfered. The company of the table sided, I realized, with Sally Gessler rather than with Bane in regard to the brown head beside me. They would welcome a break between Bane and the girl to whom he had insisted that the army flier and the mail pilot merely had "fallen". None of them, who watched us from the table, cared to assume the personal responsibility of her further information; but none interposed between her and me.