Отель «Гранд Вавилон» / The Grand Babylon hotel

’

�But seriously, Miss Racksole, I want to talk to you.’

�Do you want to talk to me as Prince Aribert or as the friend—the acquaintance—whom I knew in Paris last year?’

�As the friend, dear lady, if I may use the term.’

�And you are sure that you would not like first to be conducted to your apartments?’

�Not yet. I will wait till Dimmock comes; he cannot fail to be here soon.’

�Then we will have tea served in father’s private room—the proprietor’s private room, you know.

�Good!’ he said.

Nella talked through a telephone, and rang several bells, and behaved generally in a manner calculated to prove to Princes and to whomever it might concern that she was a young woman of business instincts and training, and then she stepped down from her chair of office, emerged from the bureau, and, preceded by two menials, led Prince Aribert to the Louis XV chamber in which her father and Felix Babylon had had their long confabulation on the previous evening.

�What do you want to talk to me about?’ she asked her companion, as she poured out for him a second cup of tea. The Prince looked at her for a moment as he took the proffered cup, and being a young man of sane, healthy, instincts, he could think of nothing for the moment except her loveliness.

Nella was indeed beautiful that afternoon. The beauty of even the most beautiful woman ebbs and flows from hour to hour. Nella’s this afternoon was at the flood. Vivacious, alert, imperious, and yet ineffably sweet, she seemed to radiate the very joy and exuberance of life.

�I have forgotten,’ he said.

�You have forgotten! That is surely very wrong of you? You gave me to understand that it was something terribly important. But of course I knew it couldn’t be, because no man, and especially no Prince, ever discussed anything really important with a woman.’

�Recollect, Miss Racksole, that this afternoon, here, I am not the Prince.

�You are Count Steenbock, is that it?’

He started. �For you only,’ he said, unconsciously lowering his voice. �Miss Racksole, I particularly wish that no one here should know that I was in Paris last spring.’

�An affair of State?’ she smiled.

�An affair of State,’ he replied soberly. �Even Dimmock doesn’t know. It was strange that we should be fellow guests at that quiet out-of-the-way hotel—strange but delightful.