"Well, in the first place," she said, "Lucille will have no time to spare for you. You will be de trop in decidedly an uncomfortable position. You wouldn't find London at all a good place to live in just now, even if you ever got there--which I am inclined to doubt. And secondly, here am I--"
"Waiting to be entertained, in a strange country, almost friendless. I want to be shown everything, taken everywhere. And I am dying to see your home at Lenox. I do not think your attitude towards me in the least hospitable."
"Come, you are judging me very quickly," he declared. "What opportunities have I had?"
"What opportunities can there be if you sail by the Campania?"
"You might dine with me to-night at least."
"Impossible! The Dalkeiths have a party to meet me. Come too, won't you? They love dukes--even French ones."
"There is no attraction for me in a large party," he answered. "I am getting to an age when to make conversation in return for a dinner seems scarcely a fair exchange."
"From your host's point of view, or yours?"
"From both! Besides, one's digestion suffers."
"You are certainly getting old," she declared. "Come, I must go. You haven't been a bit nice to me. When shall I see you again?"
She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully.
"Supposing," she said, "that I cried off the yacht race to-day. Would you take me out to lunch?"
"My dear lady," he said, "it is for Circe to command--and for me to obey."
"And you'll come and have tea with me afterwards at the Waldorf?"
"That," Mr. Sabin declared, "will add still further to my happiness."
"Will you call for me, then--and where shall we have lunch, and at what time? I must go and develop a headache at once, or that tiresome Dalkeith boy will be pounding at my door."
"I will call for you at the Waldorf at half-past one," Mr. Sabin said. "Unless you have any choice, I will take you to a little place downtown where we can imagine ourselves back on the Continent, and where we shall be spared the horror of green corn."
"Delightful," she murmured, buttoning her glove. "Then you shall take me for a drive to Fifth Avenue, or to see somebody's tomb, and my woman shall make some real Russian tea for us in my sitting-room. Really, I think I'm doing very well for the first day. Is the spell beginning to work?"