us you’d turned in passage on the Aquitania and made them squeeze you on the Mauretania . What was the cable that brought you back?” he demanded.
“You took a lovely method of enjoying a vacation in Paris, didn’t you?” she laughed, masking the perturbation she was feeling that he had gone to all that trouble to find out why she had gone. “Chasing around to modistes and steamship offices instead of enjoying Paris—”
“Mimi, don’t you know why I did it?” he pleaded. Neither of them noticed that he had called her by her first name.
“No, I don’t,” she prevaricated and then was immediately sorry, not because she had told an untruth but because he might consider it as an invitation to tell her why he had followed her. That was exactly what he did.
“Don’t think me foolish, silly, childish. Perhaps I’m all three and if I am I don’t care. I’ve always laughed at the notion of ‘love at first sight’ but I won’t do it again—”
“Don’t be foolish. You have seen me twice. You know nothing whatever about me other than that I work for my living at Francine’s. I might be an adventuress—”
“Please don’t,” he pleaded. “Be serious. Let me finish.”
“No, I can’t let you go on. There are very good reasons why there can never be anything between us—and I shan’t see you again,” she said firmly, as she rose from the table. “It’s best we let this drop right here—and oh, Jimmie, it must end now.” Her voice, which had begun so bravely and positively, faltered. At the end it was almost a sob. She left him there and was gone before he could follow her. …
Three times the next day she picked up the receiver of the telephone on her desk and hung it up again when she heard his voice. As she started