theorised while I thought of the woman and that provocative quality of dash she had displayed. The next day at lunch she and I met like old friends. A huge mass of private thinking during the interval had been added to our effect upon one another. We talked for a time of insignificant things.
“What do you do,” she asked rather quickly, “after lunch? Take a siesta?”
“Sometimes,” I said, and hung for a moment eye to eye.
We hadn't a doubt of each other, but my heart was beating like a steamer propeller when it lifts out of the water.
“Do you get a view from your room?” she asked after a pause.
“It's on the third floor, Number seventeen, near the staircase. My friend's next door.”
She began to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science, she said, and spoke of a book. I forget altogether what that book was called, though I