She was silent a moment, and then she exclaimed:
"Why, I'd almost rather marry Teddy! I'd feel freer--honestly, I think I 'd feel freer with a husband than a chaperon."
"Oh, see here!" protested Monte. "You must n't do that."
"I don't propose to," she answered quietly.
"Then," he said, "the only thing left is to go away where Teddy and the others can't find you."
"There are lots of little villages in Switzerland."
"I love the little villages," she replied. "I love them here and at home. But it's no use."
She smiled. There was something pathetic about that smile--something that made Covington's arm muscles twitch.
"I should n't even have the aid of the taxis in the little villages," she said.
"If they only had here in Paris a force of good, honest Irish cops instead of these confounded gendarmes," he mused.
She looked her astonishment at the irrelevant observation.
"You see," he explained, "it might be possible then to lay for Teddy H. some evening and--argue with him."
"It's nice of you, Monte, to think of that," she murmured.
"The trouble is, they lack sentiment, these gendarmes," he concluded. "They are altogether too law-abiding."
Monte himself had sometimes been accused of lacking sentiment; and yet, the very first thing he did when starting for his walk the next morning was to order a large bunch of violets to be sent to number sixty-four Boulevard Saint-Germain. Then, at a somewhat faster pace than usual, he followed the river to the Jardin des Tuileries, and crossed there to the Avenue des Champs Élysées into the Bois.
He walked as confidently as if overnight his schedule had again been put in good running order; for, overnight, spring had come, and that was what his schedule called for in Paris. The buds, which until now had hesitated to unfold, trembled forth almost before his eyes under the influence of a sun that this morning blazed in a turquoise sky. Perhaps they had hurried a trifle to overtake Monte.
With his shoulders well back, filling his lungs deep with the perfumed morning air, he swung along with a hearty, self-confident stride that caused many a little nursemaid to turn and look at him again.
He had sent her violets; and yet, except for the fact that he had never before sent her flowers, he could not rightly be accused of sentimentalism. He had acted on the spur of the moment, remembering only the sad, wistful smile with which she had bade him good-night when she stood at the door of the _pension_. Or perhaps he had been prompted by the fact that she was in Paris alone.