"I will do my best; I cannot say more than that."
Neither Madame Gilbert nor Captain Rust are very communicative concerning their adventures, until they begin to speak of that day when first they met one another in the courtyard of the Savoy Hotel. They both then become voluble. I rather gather--though I did not cross-examine them at all closely--that they had been a good deal bored. Their instructions were so very vague, and the best method of carrying them out so far from clear to their ingenious minds, that they wandered aimlessly about the resorts most affected by officers on leave, spent much money, made a good many pleasant acquaintances, but progressed not at all in their researches. Madame did not meet with any French or Belgian flying officers who seemed likely to be German agents, and Captain Rust failed to discover a siren who appeared to be French and yet was not French, and who aroused any plausible suspicion that she dwelt in the central web of German intrigue. Madame began to think that for once the impeccable Dawson had despatched her upon a wild goose chase, and Rust became convinced that Froissart's vivid longing to score off the detested Dawson had misled him in the selection of the means to bring about this much-desired consummation. They told me little of these wanderings, but when I asked for details of their first meeting, the one with the other, and their subsequent rather startling proceedings, they broke into eager speech. It was not until my keen and curious eye began to penetrate the delicate mysteries surrounding their surprising week-end visit to Brighton that Rust again became tongue-tied. He reprehensibly slurred over the most entertaining details. Madame Gilbert, on the other hand, revealed everything with that plain-spoken frankness which, in any other woman, would appear to be brazen. Madame is thirty-two; Captain Rust no more than twenty-six. He is a modest young man in spite of his French training; she, I am afraid, is a hussy. But I would not have her other than she is.
Madame Gilbert was taking tea alone in the courtyard of the Savoy. She occupied one place at a table laid for four. It was a fine afternoon in late spring, motors and taxis ran in and out unceasingly, the open-air restaurant began to fill up, but none ventured to approach any one of three empty places at Madame's table. She was, as usual, perfectly dressed--though she assures me that her clothes cost next to nothing. "It is the wearing of them, my friend, not the cost which counts." I fancy that her unshakable temper and her gay humour, like her beauty, are really based, as she says, upon her complete freedom from ailments. She loves life, and this, perhaps, is why life loves her.