.. but I'll have a deck suite
for you on the Semantic if you'll sail with me the day after to-morrow."
XLVI
In the great high-ceilinged library of a private hotel overlooking one
of the new quarters of Paris, Paul Marvell stood listlessly gazing out
into the twilight.
The trees were budding symmetrically along the avenue below; and Paul,
looking down, saw, between windows and tree-tops, a pair of tall iron
gates with gilt ornaments, the marble curb of a semi-circular drive,
and bands of spring flowers set in turf. He was now a big boy of nearly
nine, who went to a fashionable private school, and he had come home
that day for the Easter holidays. He had not been back since Christmas,
and it was the first time he had seen the new hotel which his
step-father had bought, and in which Mr. and Mrs. Moffatt had hastily
established themselves, a few weeks earlier, on their return from a
flying trip to America. They were always coming and going; during the
two years since their marriage they had been perpetually dashing over to
New York and back, or rushing down to Rome or up to the Engadine: Paul
never knew where they were except when a telegram announced that they
were going somewhere else. He did not even know that there was any
method of communication between mothers and sons less laconic than that
of the electric wire; and once, when a boy at school asked him if his
mother often wrote, he had answered in all sincerity: "Oh yes--I got a
telegram last week.
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