"Is it the
fellow who was over at Nice with you that day?"
She looked at him with surprise. "How did you know?"
"Why, I liked his looks," said Moffatt simply. He got up and strolled
toward the window. On the way he stopped before a table covered with
showy trifles, and after looking at them for a moment singled out a dim
old brown and golden book which Chelles had given her. He examined
it lingeringly, as though it touched the spring of some choked-up
sensibility for which he had no language. "Say--" he began: it was the
usual prelude to his enthusiasms; but he laid the book down and turned
back.
"Then you think if you had the cash you could fix it up all right with
the Pope?"
Her heart began to beat. She remembered that he had once put a job in
Ralph's way, and had let her understand that he had done it partly for
her sake.
"Well," he continued, relapsing into hyperbole, "I wish I could send the
old gentleman my cheque to-morrow morning: but the fact is I'm high and
dry." He looked at her with a sudden odd intensity. "If I WASN'T, I
dunno but what--" The phrase was lost in his familiar whistle.
"That's an awfully fetching way you do your hair," he said. It was a
disappointment to Undine to hear that his affairs were not prospering,
for she knew that in his world "pull" and solvency were closely related,
and that such support as she had hoped he might give her would be
contingent on his own situation.
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