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 "Stop at the next corner," she cried.

Grover's blood ran cold. Had it come to—ejection! Then his heart gave a leap.

"It's a shop I discovered a few days ago," she explained. "They make the most heavenly cakes. I'm going to get myriads of them for tea. You'd better come in and choose your own. I like the ones that look like Mohammedan mosques all out of drawing and I don't care who knows it."

Now he could take her hand, to help her down, and he squeezed it, which brought back her city smile, and he laughed to think how near he was to the verge of tears—ass! Ass!

He chose cinnamon buns.

We won't go to the country again, he was thinking, till after.

Nothing, thought Grover, could be more hopelessly innocent than sitting before all this silver, eating cinnamon buns and,—now that you knew Sophie well enough,—licking the sugar off your fingers. He remembered a passage in the Confessions d'un Enfant du Siècle that was as unlike the present impasse as anything could be, particularly the behavior of the lady. Sophie wasn't flirting at all; if anything she looked as though she had had a mild headache but was now feeling better, thanks. Over his cup he watched for some sign in her of his own subcutaneous restlessness.