"Shan't we sit down?" Ormizon suggested.
They were standing directly in front of the little open-air café in the middle of the garden. They established themselves at one of the small iron tables, and called for sirop de groseille and crisp hot gauffres. The band played lustily. The people moved about, laughing and chattering. The doctor gave him permission to light a cigarette. Denise kept smiling upon him in the most amicable fashion. Take it for all in all, Stephen Orinizon's felicity was probably as complete as that of any man abroad that day.
All at once Denise exclaimed, "Oh, this gauffre of mine! It is the best I have ever tasted. It is done juste à point. You must each take a bite."
She broke it into three morsels, and with her own fingers deposited one of them upon the doctor's plate, and another upon Orinizon's.
He felt as though it would somehow be a desecration to eat that bit of gauffre. He would have liked to preserve it forever. But gauffre, by its very nature, is perishable to the last degree. Besides, to put it into his pocket would attract attention, and very possibly make the ladies think he was a madman. So, with the courage of despair, he gulped it down.
"Yes, it is certainly the most delicious gauffre I ever tasted," he declared, with unquestionable sincerity. Had not her fingers touched it, gloved though they were?
By and by, "Allons," said the doctor. "Let us walk a little."
As he sauntered at Denise's side through the soft summer weather, a glow of well-being suffused his senses. The very smell of the leaves, brought out by the heat of the sun, regaled his nostrils like the rarest incense. His blood went leaping, tingling, through his veins. Without knowing it, he began to sing softly to himself,—
"Di-tes la jeu-ne belle, où voulez-vous aller?"
"Why, how lovely!" suddenly cried Dr. Gluck. "There's Lancelot. Isn't it jolly?"
"Oh, yes," chimed in Denise, with an air that betokened much pleasure, and that sent a pang of jealousy shooting through Ormizon's breast; "so it is. Quel bonheur!"
"Lancelot! Lancelot!" called the doctor, flourishing her parasol to attract Lancelot's notice.
"Hi! Hello!" Lancelot responded, and elbowed his way to where they waited for him.
After greetings and hand-shakes had been exchanged between the new-comer and the ladies, "Mr. Ormizon," said the doctor, "allow me to present our friend Mr. Palmer."
Mr. Palmer was a tall thin young fellow, of five- or six-and-twenty, with clean-cut aquiline features, deep-set intelligent gray eyes, and a thick shock of brown hair that fell below the collar of his coat at the back. The coat in question was a Prince Albert, faded, threadbare, white at the seams, frayed at the binding, and conspicuous for its exceedingly long skirts, which descended as low as the wearer's knees. On the top of his head he wore a small soft wide-awake hat, that produced a somewhat incongruous effect of boyishness. At the other
