"Did you give them the key?" she asked, seizing my arm.
"Yes, I gave them 'the' key. I'm going to see the agent to-morrow."
"Oh, Jeff!" She said it as if there was something miraculous in it that an agent might actually consent to be seen about that little house on the morrow.
"That is, unless to-morrow's a holiday too."
"Oh, you _must_ go!" she broke out. "It would be _too_ awful if we were to miss it!"
Then, as a waiter came with a sopping cloth to wipe down the table, we ceased to talk.
Already they were beginning to light up everywhere. The crowded garden became a complexity of ceaselessly moving shadows with a hundred little accidents of light--the flames of sudden matches, yellow shafts as people moved aside from windows, the twinkling festoons of the arbours, the gleam of liquid spilt on tables. A glow like that of a furnace rose behind the trees in front of us, and over the tree-tops rose swinging boats, sometimes one, sometimes two or three at a time, with lads standing with bent knees on the seats and the girls' feathers tossing and boas flying in the golden haze. The noise became a ceaseless twanging everywhere, and I watched with amusement a half-drunk but wholly happy sailor at the next table, who nodded sleepily from time to time, then looked with wideawake and amiable defiance about him, and had quite forgotten that he wore his companion's hat hearsed with black feathers.
"Do you want to change hats?" I said to Evie, with a glance at her pheasants' feather toque.
"No--but----" I saw her own glance at the sailor's thick wrist, which had appeared on our side of his companion.
The next moment, though with protests, she was leaning farther back in the shadow.
Then, close and in murmurs, we began to talk.
I am not going to claim for Evie that she ever had any very remarkable gift of tongues. I don't mean that on occasion she couldn't talk for half a day on end; but I do mean that beyond a certain point she displayed a diffidence, talk became something of an adventure to her, and she had a way of advancing upon a silence as if it was a fortified place, to be carried by assault, and not to be won by beleaguering. Therefore, seeing her now sensible of a new liberation and joy, I was not unprepared for little excesses, things said out of mere fulness, and perhaps even to be slightly regretted on the morrow.