Page:Possession (1926).pdf/72

 Then the sound of a voice reached him, warm, low, insinuating. "I advise you against the chops. They are atrocious. I was forced to send them back and order something else."

The woman had spoken to him of her own accord and his suspicions arose in sudden array, bristling and fully armed. Yet he knew that he must answer. Heroically he looked up and asked,

"What do you advise?"

"The roast beef is very good. . . ."

Though he detested it, he wrote down roast beef and then straightened in his chair, pulling at his collar and cravat. For the life of him, he could find nothing to say. It was impossible to overcome that fragile, invisible barrier.

"Don't think me impertinent," she said, "for speaking . . . but I'm almost bored to death. . . . I hate traveling. . . . I'd like always to stay in one spot."

For an instant he suspected the faintest trace of a foreign accent in her voice, though he could not be certain.

"I know," he said politely, "I hate it too. . . ."

She laughed softly.

"It's the first time I've traveled any distance in years. . . . I couldn't talk to the old crow who sat there before you. . . . It would have frightened him to death."

It was impossible for Clarence to say that it also frightened him to death, so he coughed and buttered a bit of roll.

"You don't mind my speaking, do you?" she pursued.

For a moment Clarence fancied he had lost his mind. It was queer enough that a strange woman should speak to him, but even queerer that she should sweep past all the procedure of good manners and ask him directly whether he minded it. And she was neither brazen nor embarrassed.

"No, of course not," he managed to say, "I mean I'm awfully glad. I hate traveling alone."

Then it occurred to him that he had made an indelicate, perhaps a suggestive remark, and the blushes once more swept his face. 