at least twenty times a day since they — came abroad: “Isn’t it extraordinary to think that here we are quite alone, away from everybody, with nobody to tell us to go home, or to — to order us about except ourselves?”
George had long since given up answering “Extraordinary!” As a rule he merely kissed her. But now he caught hold of her hand, stuffed it into his pocket, pressed her fingers, and said, “I used to keep a white mouse in my pocket when I was a kid.”
“Did you?” said Fanny, who was intensely interested in everything George had ever done. “Were you very fond of white mice?”
“Fairly,” said George, without conviction. He was looking at something, bobbing out there beyond the bathing steps. Suddenly he almost jumped in his seat. “Fanny!” he cried. “.There’s a chap out there bathing. Do you see? I’d no idea people had begun. I’ve been missing it all these days.” George glared at the reddened face, the reddened arm, as though he could not look away. “At any rate,” he muttered, “wild horses won’t keep me from going in to-morrow morning.”
Fanny’s heart sank. She had heard for years of the frightful dangers of the Mediterranean. It was an absolute death-trap. Beautiful, treacherous Mediterranean. There it lay curled before them, its white, silky paws touching the stones and gone again... But she’d made up her mind long before she was married that never would she be the kind of woman who interfered with her husband’s pleasures, so all she said was, airily, “I suppose one has to be very up in the currents, doesn’t one?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said George. “People talk an awful lot of rot about the danger.”
But now they were passing a high wall on the land side, covered with flowering heliotrope, and
Fanny’s little nose lifted. “Oh George,” she breathed. “The smell! The most divine...”
“Topping villa,” said George. “Look, you can see it through the palms.”
“Isn’t it rather large?” said Fanny, who somehow could not look at any villa except as a possible habitation for herself and George.
“Well, you’d need a crowd of people if you stayed there long,” replied George. “Deadly, otherwise. I say, it is ripping. I wonder who it belongs to.” And he prodded the driver in the back.
The lazy, smiling driver, who had no idea, replied, as he always did on these occasions, that it was the property of a wealthy Spanish family.
“Masses of Spaniards on this coast,” commented George, leaning back again, and they were silent until, as they rounded a bend, the big, bone-white hotel-restaurant came into view. Before it there was a small terrace built up against the sea, planted with umbrella palms, set out with tables, and at their approach, from the terrace, from the hotel, waiters came running to receive, to welcome Fanny and George, to cut them off from any possible kind of escape.
“Outside?”
Oh, but of course they would sit outside. The sleek manager, who was marvellously like a fish in a frock coat, skimmed forward.
“Dis way, sir. Dis way, sir. I have a very nice little table,” he gasped. “Just the little table for you, sir, over in de corner. Dis way.”
So George, looking most dreadfully bored, and Fanny, trying to look as though she’d spent years of life threading her way through strangers, followed after.
“Here you are, sir. Here you will be very nice,” coaxed the manager, taking the vase off the table, and putting it down again as if it were a fresh little bouquet out of the air. But George refused to sit down immediately. He saw through these fellows; he wasn’t going to be done. These chaps were always out to rush you. So he put his hands in his pockets, and said to Fanny, very calmly, “This all right for you? Anywhere else you’d prefer? How about over there?” And he nodded to a table right over the other side.
What it was to be a man of the world! Fanny admired him deeply, but all she wanted to do was to sit down and look like everybody else.
“I — I like this,” said she.
“Right,” said George, hastily, and he sat down almost before Fanny, and said quickly, “Tea for two and chocolate éclairs.”
“Very good, sir,” said the manager, and his mouth opened and shut as though he was ready for another dive under the water. “You will not ‘ave toasts to start with? We’ ave very nice toasts, sir.”
“No,” said George, shortly. “You don’t want toast, do you, Fanny?”
“Oh, no, thank you, George,” said Fanny, praying the manager would go.
“Or perhaps de lady might like to look at de live lobsters in de tank while de tea is coming?” And he grimaced and smirked and flicked his serviette like a fin.
George’s face grew stony. He said “No” again, and Fanny bent over the table, unbuttoning her gloves. When she looked up the man was gone. George took off his hat, tossed it on to a chair, and pressed back his hair.
“Thank God,” said he, “that chap’s gone. These foreign fellows bore me stiff. The only way to get rid of them is simply to shut up as you saw I did. Thank Heaven!” sighed George again, with so much emotion that if it hadn’t been ridiculous Fanny might have imagined that he had been as frightened of the manager as she. As it was she felt a rush of love for George. His hands were on the table, brown, large hands that she knew so well. She longed to take one of them and squeeze it hard. But, to her astonishment, George did just that thing. Leaning across the table, he put his hand over hers, and said, without looking at her, “Fanny, darling Fanny!”
“Oh, George!” It was in that heavenly moment that Fanny heard a twing-twing-tootle-tootle, and a light strumming. There’s going to be music, she thought, but the music didn’t matter just then. Nothing mattered except love. Faintly smiling she gazed into that faintly smiling face, and the feeling was so blissful that she felt inclined to say to George, “Let us stay here — where we are — at this little table. It’s perfect, and the sea is perfect. Let us stay.” But instead her eyes grew serious.
“Darling,” said Fanny. “I want to ask you something fearfully important. Promise me you’ll answer. Promise.”
“I promise,” said George, too solemn to be quite as serious as she.
“It’s this.” Fanny paused a moment, looked down, looked up again. “Do you feel,” she said, softly, “that you really know me now? But really, really know me?”
It was too much for George. Know his Fanny? He gave a broad, childish grin. “I should jolly well think I do,” he said, emphatically. “Why, what’s up?”
Fanny felt he hadn’t quite understood. She went on quickly: “What I mean is this. So often people, even when they love each other, don’t seem to — to — it’s so hard to say — know each other perfectly. They don’t seem to want to. And I think that’s awful. They misunderstand each other about the most important things of all.” Fanny looked horrified. “George, we couldn’t do that, could we? We never could.”
“Couldn’t be done,” laughed George, and he was just going to tell her how much he liked her little nose, when the waiter arrived with the tea and the band struck up. It was a flute, a guitar, and a violin, and it played so gaily that Fanny felt
