"The sight of you two is like a breath of fresh air. Did you ever meet
with anything so stuffy?"

Now, considering that all these prosperous folks had come to do her
homage I thought the remark rather ungracious.

"It's apt to be stuffy in July in London," I said.

She laid her hand on Barbara's wrist and pointed at me with her fan.

"He thinks he's rebuking me. But I don't care. I'm glad to see him all
the same. These people mean nothing but money and music-halls and bridge
and restaurants--I'm so sick of it. You two mean something else."

"Don't speak sacrilegiously of restaurants, even though you are going to
marry a genius," said I. "There is one in Paris to which Adrian will
take you straight--like a homing bird."

"Wherever Adrian takes me, it will be beautiful," she said defiantly.

My little critical humour vanished, for she looked so valiantly adorable
in her love for the man. She was very small and slenderly made, with
dark hair, luminous eyes, and ivory-white complexion, a sensitive nose
and mouth, a wisp of nerves and passion. She carried her head high and,
for so diminutive a person, appeared vastly important.

Adrian, released from an ex-Lady Mayoress, came up all smiles, to greet
us. Doria gave him a glance which in spite of my devotion to Barbara and
my abhorrence of hair's breadth deviation from strict monogamy dealt me
a pang of unregenerate jealousy. There is only one man in the universe