"If you like," she murmured, simply....
And only a few yards away, the man from the dead and the woman who had loved him seemed to have drifted into a summer day-dream. The strangeness of this thing held them both—ordinary intercourse seemed impossible. What they spoke about they scarcely knew! There were days, golden days to be whispered about and lived again; treasured minutes to be recalled, looks and words remembered. Of the future, of the actual present, save of their two selves, they scarcely spoke. It was an hour snatched from Paradise for her! She would not let it go lightly. She would not suffer even a cloud to pass across it!
In time, Monsieur Jules found himself constrained to announce that dejeuner was served. He found it useless to try to attract the attention of either Madame de Melbain or Duncan, so he went in search of Wrayson.
"Monsieur is served," he announced, looking blandly upwards at a passing cloud. "There remains the wine only."
"Chablis of the best, and ice, and mineral water," Wrayson ordered. "Come, Louise."
She sighed a little as she rose and followed him along the narrow path, where the rose-bushes brushed against her skirt, and the air was fragrant with lavender. It had been an interlude only, after all, though the man whose hand she still held would never have admitted it. But—he did not know! She prayed to Heaven that he never might.
Luncheon, after all, with a waiter within hearing, and Monsieur Jules hovering round, banished in a great measure the curious sense of unreality from which none of them were wholly free. And when coffee came,
