She twirled the glass, uneasily. "I am not in actual need of assistance."
"But you spoke peculiarly regarding loneliness."
"Perhaps I like the melodrama. You spoke of the Ambigu-Comique."
He laughed once more, and drew his chair closer to the table.
"Monsieur in other moods must have a pleasant laughter."
"I haven't laughed from the heart in a very long time," he said, returning to his former gravity, this time unassumed.
"And I have accomplished this amazing thing?"
"No. You followed me here. But from where?"
"Followed you?" The effort to give a mocking accent to her voice was a failure.
"Yes. The idea just occurred to me. There were other vacant chairs, and there was nothing inviting in my facial expression. Come, let me have the truth."
"I have a friend who knows Flora Desimone."
"Ah!" As if this information was a direct visitation of kindness from the gods. "Then you know where the Calabrian lives? Give me her address."
There was a minute wrinkle above the unknown's nose; the shadow of a frown. "She is very beautiful."
"Bah! Did she send you after me? Give me her address. I have come all the way from Burma to see Flora Desimone."
"To see her?" She unguardedly clothed the question with contempt, but she instantly forced a smile to neutralize the effect. Concerned with her own defined conclusions, she lost the fine ironic bitterness that was in the man's voice.
"Aye, indeed, to see her! Beautiful as Venus, as alluring as Phryne, I want nothing so much as to see her, to look into her eyes, to hear her voice!"
"Is it jealousy? I hear the tragic note." The certainty of her ground became as morass again. In his turn he was puzzling her.
"Tragedy? I am an American. We do not kill opera singers. We turn them over to the critics. I wish to see the beautiful Flora, to ask her a few questions. If she has sent you after me, her address, my dear young lady, her address." His eyes burned.
"I am afraid." And she was so. This wasn't the tone of a man madly in love. It was wild anger.
"I will give you a hundred francs." He watched her closely and shrewdly.
Came the little wrinkle again, but this time urged in perplexity. "A hundred francs, for something I was sent to tell you?"
"It is very generous. She has a heart of flint, Monsieur."