"Be calm, my friend," she reassured him. "We shall have a nice little tea all to ourselves. The others have gone to Versailles and are only coming back in time to dine. We dine _chez nous_, as we have a _bonne_ who cooks. Of course I can't be in to _déjeuner_, as the distance is too great from my school. You must come one evening and I'll present you."
He thanked her for the suggestion, glad to welcome every arrangement that promised in any way to throw their lives together, for he had been not a little afraid he might not after all have the opportunity of seeing very much of her.
As Miss Brooke made the tea in the pretty drawing room of the cosy flat, Paul began to realise with surprise how much progress their friendship had made in that one day. His dream had turned out true! He was so happy that the consciousness of all but the moment faded from him. London, his mother, Celia, and even chess were for the time absolutely non-existent. "Charlie," too, was forgotten, as the obnoxious name had not again dropped from Miss Brooke's lips.
He took his leave at last, filled with joy by Miss Brooke's promise to run in on the morrow to _déjeuner_ at the same little restaurant. But as he turned from the broad stairway into the hall, he almost collided in his pre-occupation with a tall well-dressed man. Both murmured "_Pardon!_" and pursued their ways. Paul had seen the other's face, but he had taken several steps forward before the features sank into his brain, and he realised with a great shock they were those of "Charlie."
HOWEVER, Miss Brooke said nothing to him about Charlie in the days that followed, though he saw her often. Without it being specially mentioned again, it was somehow understood they were, for the present, to meet at mid-day at the little restaurant, and, moreover, she allowed him to take her several times to the two Salons. He might easily have dragged in references to Pemberton, but he felt it would not be right to do so for the mere purpose of discovering what it would have been an impertinence to demand outright.
And the more his _camaraderie_ with Miss Brooke became an established fact, the more did this question of Charlie disturb him. He had discovered by this time that a harmless friendship between a man and a girl was by no means unusual among the students and was not necessarily assumed to imply matrimonial intentions. He knew, moreover, that such friendships grew rapidly on this soil where the English-speaking students gravitated together during the years of their voluntary exile. But, if this thought pacified him as to Miss Brooke and Charlie, the very pacification carried with it a sting. For it led to the further tormenting suspicion that Miss Brooke did not take the relationship between her and himself as seriously as he would have liked her to. Her conduct and bearing towards him were all he could wish, yet he seemed to feel behind them a stern limit to the intimacy, a barrier, as it were, that might bear on its face: "I am put here by way of giving you a reminder you are not to make any mistakes as to the extent of your rights over this property."