"No, Monte," she answered, with a decided shake of her head.
"But, hang it all, people don't go a-gypsying with French maids!"
She asked the question quite honestly. He had forgotten Marie utterly until this moment, and she seemed to join the party like an intruder. Always she would be upon the back seat.
"Wouldn't you feel freer without her?" he asked.
"I should n't feel at all proper," she declared.
"Then we might just as well not have been married."
"Only," she laughed, "if we had n't taken that precaution it would n't have been proper for me to go, even with Marie."
"I'm glad we've accomplished something, anyhow," he answered good-naturedly.
"We've accomplished a great deal," she assured him. "Yesterday morning I could n't--at this time--have done even the proper things and felt proper. Oh, you don't know how people look at you, and how that look makes you feel, even when you know better. I could n't have sat here at breakfast with you and felt comfortable. Now we can sit here and plan a wonderful trip like this. It's all because you're just Monte."
"Only I don't count for anything. It makes me feel even more selfish than I am."
He stifled the words that sprang to his lips. It was only because she thought she did not count that she was able to feel comfortable. Once let her know that she counted as at that moment she did count to him, and even what little happiness he was able to bring her would vanish. He would be to her then merely one of the others--even as he was to himself.
"I must see about getting a machine," he said. "I want to start this afternoon if possible."
As they went out to the office, the clerk stepped up to him.
"I have secured the reservation, monsieur," he announced.
"On the Calais express--for a friend of mine who has decided not to go," he answered.
Monte made an extravagant purchase: a new high-powered touring car capacious enough for a whole family--his idea being, that the roomier the car, the less Marie would show up in it. On the other hand, if he cared to consider her in that way, Marie would be there as much for his protection as Marjory's. The task that lay ahead of him this next week was well defined; it was to get back to normal. He had diagnosed his disease--now he must cure it. It would have been much easier to have done this by himself, but this was impossible. He must learn to gaze steadily into her eyes, while gazing into them; he must learn to look indifferently upon her lips, with her within arm's reach of him. Here was a man's job.