"Hanged if I know," he replied frankly.

While we were discussing the advisability of my departure Genevieve
reappeared in the doorway without her bonnet. She was wonderfully
beautiful, but her colour was too deep and her lovely eyes were too
bright. She came straight up to me and took my arm.

"Luncheon is ready. Was I cross, Alec? I thought I had a headache, but I
haven't. Come here, Boris;" and she slipped her other arm through his.
"Alec knows that after you there is no one in the world whom I like as
well as I like him, so if he sometimes feels snubbed it won't hurt him."

"A la bonheur!" I cried, "who says there are no thunderstorms in April?"

"Are you ready?" chanted Boris. "Aye ready;" and arm-in-arm we raced into
the dining-room, scandalizing the servants. After all we were not so much
to blame; Genevieve was eighteen, Boris was twenty-three, and I not quite
twenty-one.




II

Some work that I was doing about this time on the decorations for
Genevieve's boudoir kept me constantly at the quaint little hotel in the
Rue Sainte-Cecile. Boris and I in those days laboured hard but as we
pleased, which was fitfully, and we all three, with Jack Scott, idled a
great deal together.