The Intercession

Just as I was walking away from the hotel I perceived Rosa's victoria
drawing up before the portico. She saw me. We exchanged a long look--a
look charged with anxious questionings. Then she beckoned to me, and
I, as it were suddenly waking from a trance, raised my hat, and went
to her.

"Get in," she said, without further greeting. "We will drive to the
Arc de Triomphe and back. I was going to call on Mrs. Sullivan
Smith,--just a visit of etiquette,--but I will postpone that."

Her manner was constrained, as it had been on the previous day, but I
could see that she was striving hard to be natural. For myself, I did
not speak. I felt nervous, even irritable, in my love for her.
Gradually, however, her presence soothed me, slackened the tension of
my system, and I was able to find a faint pleasure in the beauty of
the September afternoon, and of the girl by my side, in the smooth
movement of the carriage, and the general gaiety and color of the
broad tree-lined Champs Elysées.

"Why do you ask me to drive with you?" I asked her at length, abruptly
yet suavely. Amid the noise of the traffic we could converse with the
utmost privacy.

"Because I have something to say to you," she answered, looking
straight in front of her.