"For which I am, as always in the face of favors, duly grateful," said Peter in high humor. "None the less I have this day, since we parted this morning, indulged in one pistol duel between sampans, with one of your admirable confrères----"
"Yes, I heard of that. But it stopped there. You winged his sampan coolie."
"And at the Canton station, if I may be pardoned for contradicting, I encountered the red-faced one. To tell you what you may already know, I punched him in the jaw, dog-gone him!"
Peter shook his head forcibly. "A choleric gentleman born with the habit of reaching for his hip-pocket," he amplified.
She studied him with wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have been informed."
"To permit me to live and love until one to-morrow morning?"
The aspiring and perspiring orchestra and the impassioned tenor had again reached the chorus of "Un Peu d'Amour."
"I could ge-e-e-eve you al-l-l my life for the-e-e-e-s--"
"Badly sung, but appropriate," commented Romola Borria.
Peter's countenance became a question mark.
"It may mean that I am giving you all my life for--this," she explained.
"For these few minutes, when we were to chatter, and make love, and be happy?" Peter demanded indignantly. "My dear----" He reached out for her hand, and she let him fondle it, not reluctantly. "I'd give all my life, too, for these few minutes with you. Do you know--you're perfectly adorable to-night! There's something--something irresistible about you--to me!"
"Yes," he said in a deep voice, and sincerely. "I'd come all the way 'round the world, and lay my life at your feet--thus." And he placed his knuckles on the white cloth, as if they were knees.
"I know. You are fickle. Miss Lorimer--Miss--Vost--Romola--they come, they love, they are gone, quite as fatefully and systematically as life follows death, and death follows life."
"I do wish you wouldn't talk about death in that flippant manner," he gibed, wondering how under the sun he might get her out of this gloomy mood.
"But death is in my mind always--Peter. When you have gone through----"
"Very well; I refuse to talk of anything but love and death."
"Excellent, my own love! Tell me now how it feels when _you_ are in the heavenly condition."