“I hope you have not been ordering a dreadfully expensive meal,” she ventured to say. “I must pay my share, you know, and I am quite an economical person.” “There!” he vowed. “That is the first unkind word you have uttered. Surely you will not refuse to be my guest? Indeed, I was hoping that to-day marked the beginning of a new era, wherein we might meet at times and criticize humanity to our hearts’ content.” [Pg 56] [Pg 56] “I should feel unhappy if I did not pay,” she insisted. “Well, then, I shall charge you table d’hôte prices. Will that content you?” So, when the attendant came to the other tables, Helen produced her purse, and Bower solemnly accepted her few francs; but no bill was presented to him. “You see,” he said, smiling at her through a glass of golden wine, “you have missed a great opportunity. Not one woman in a million can say that she has dined at the railway company’s expense in France.” She was puzzled. His manner had become slightly more confidential during the meal. It needed no feminine intuition to realize that he admired her. Excitement, the sea air, the heated atmosphere, and unceasing onrush of the train, had flushed her cheeks and lent a deeper shade to her brown eyes. She knew that Bower’s was not the only glance that dwelt on her with a curious and somewhat unnerving appraisement. Other men, and not a few women, stared at her. The mirror in her dressing room had told her that she was looking her best, and her heart fluttered a little at the thought that she had succeeded, without effort, in winning the appreciation of a man highly placed in the world of fashion and finance. The conceit induced an odd feeling of embarrassment. To dispel it she took up his words in a vein of playful sarcasm. [Pg 57] [Pg 57] “If you assure me that for some unexplained reason the railway authorities are giving us this excellent dinner for nothing, please return my money,” she said. “The gifts of the gods, and eke of railway companies, must be taken without question,” he answered. “No, I shall keep your pieces of silver. I mean to invest them. It will amuse me to learn how much I can make on an initial capital of twelve francs, fifty centimes. Will you allow that? I shall be scrupulously accurate, and
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