"Oh--Mr. Temple!"
He stopped and turned.
"I was looking for a place to dine. I'm tired of Garnier's and Thirion's."
He hesitated. And he, too, remembered the night at the Café d'Harcourt, when she had disdained his advice and gone back to take the advice of Paula.
He caught himself assuring himself that a man need not be ashamed to risk being snubbed--making a fool of himself even--if he could do any good. So he said: "You know I have horrid old-fashioned ideas about women," and stopped short.
"Don't you know of any good quiet place near here?" said Betty.
"I think women ought to be taken care of. But some of them--Miss Desmond, I'm so afraid of you--I'm afraid of boring you--"
Remorse stirred her.
"You've always been most awfully kind," she said warmly. "I've often wanted to tell you that I'm sorry about that first time I saw you--I'm not sorry for what I did," she added in haste; "I can never be anything but glad for that. But I'm sorry I seemed ungrateful to you."
"Now you give me courage," he said. "I do know a quiet little place quite near here. And, as you haven't any of your friends with you, won't you take pity on me and let me dine with you?"
"You're sure you're not giving up some nice engagement--just to--to be kind to me?" she asked. And the forlornness of her tone made him almost forget that he had half promised to join a party of Lady St. Craye's.
"I should like to come with you--I should like it of all things," he said; and he said it convincingly.
They dined together, and the dinner was unexpectedly pleasant to both of them. They talked of England, of wood, field and meadow, and Betty found herself talking to him of the garden at home and of the things that grew there, as she had talked to Paula, and as she had never talked to Vernon.
"It's so lovely all the year," she said. "When the last mignonette's over, there are the chrysanthemums, and then the Christmas roses, and ever so early in January the winter aconite and the snow-drops, and the violets under the south wall. And then the little green daffodil leaves come up and the buds, though it's weeks before they turn into flowers. And if it's a mild winter the primroses--just little baby ones--seem to go on all the time."
"Yes," he said, "I know. And the wallflowers, they're green all the time.--And the monthly roses, they flower at Christmas. And then when the real roses begin to bud--and when June comes--and you're drunk with the scent of red roses--the kind you always long for at Christmas."