"One thing is certain," he remarked. "We do not want to spend three hours and a half in the station. I want some dinner. A four hours' probe is apt to make one a little hungry. Come, we will go and have something to eat."
The idea had evidently come to him as a species of inspiration, and he openly rejoiced in it.
"I am not hungry," said I; but I was, very. I knew it now that the idea "dinner" had made itself conspicuous in my consciousness.
"Perhaps you think not; but you are, all the same," he said. "Come with me, Fräulein. You have put yourself into my hands; you must do what I tell you."
I followed him mechanically out of the station and down the street, and I tried to realize that instead of being with Miss Hallam and Merrick, my natural and respectable protectors, safely and conventionally plodding the slow way in the slow continental train to the slow continental town, I was parading about the streets of Köln with a man of whose very existence I had half an hour ago been ignorant; I was dependent, too, upon him, and him alone, for my safe arrival at Elberthal. And I followed him unquestioningly, now and then telling myself, by way of feeble consolation, that he was a gentleman--he certainly was a gentleman--and wishing now and then, or trying to wish, with my usual proper feeling, that it had been some nice old lady with whom I had fallen in: it would have made the whole adventure blameless, and, comparatively speaking, agreeable.
We went along a street and came to a hotel, a large building, into which my conductor walked, spoke to a waiter, and we were shown into the restaurant, full of round tables, and containing some half dozen parties of people. I followed with stony resignation. It was the severest trial of all, this coming to a hotel alone with a gentleman in broad daylight. I caught sight of a reflection in a mirror of a tall, pale girl, with heavy, tumbled auburn hair, a brown hat which suited her, and a severely simple traveling-dress. I did not realize until I had gone past that it was my own reflection which I had seen.
"Suppose we sit here," said he, going to a table in a comparatively secluded window recess, partially overhung with curtains.
"How very kind and considerate of him!" thought I.