“With you—­yes,” answered Jefferson, with a significant smile.

Shirley tried to look angry.  She strictly discouraged these conventional, sentimental speeches which constantly flung her sex in her face.

“Now, you know I don’t like you to talk that way, Mr. Ryder.  It’s most undignified.  Please be sensible.”

Quite subdued, Jefferson relapsed into a sulky silence.  Presently he said: 

“I wish you wouldn’t call me Mr. Ryder.  I meant to ask you this before.  You know very well that you’ve no great love for the name, and if you persist you’ll end by including me in your hatred of the hero of your book.”

Shirley looked at him with amused curiosity.

“What do you mean?” she asked.  “What do you want me to call you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he stammered, rather intimidated by this self-possessed young woman who looked him calmly through and through.  “Why not call me Jefferson?  Mr. Ryder is so formal.”

Shirley laughed outright, a merry, unrestrained peal of honest laughter, which made the passers-by turn their heads and smile, too, commenting the while on the stylish appearance of the two Americans whom they took for sweethearts.  After all, reasoned Shirley, he was right.  They had been together now nearly every hour in the day for over a month.  It was absurd to call him Mr. Ryder.  So, addressing him with mock gravity, she said: 

“You’re right, Mr. Ryder—­I mean Jefferson.  You’re quite right.  You are Jefferson from this time on, only remember”—­here she shook her gloved finger at him warningly—­“mind you behave yourself!  No more such sentimental speeches as you made just now.”

Jefferson beamed.  He felt at least two inches taller, and at that moment he would not have changed places with any one in the world.  To hide the embarrassment his gratification caused him he pulled out his watch and exclaimed: 

“Why, it’s a quarter past six.  We shall have all we can do to get back to the hotel and dress for dinner.”

Shirley rose at once, although loath to leave.

“I had no idea it was so late,” she said.  “How the time flies!” Then mockingly she added:  “Come, Jefferson—­be a good boy and find a cab.”

They passed out of the Gardens by the gate facing the Theatre de l’Odeon, where there was a long string of fiacres for hire.  They got into one and in fifteen minutes they were back at the Grand Hotel.

At the office they told Shirley that her aunt had already come in and gone to her room, so she hurried upstairs to dress for dinner while Jefferson proceeded to the Hotel de l’Athenee on the same mission.  He. had still twenty-five minutes before dinner time, and he needed only ten minutes for a wash and to jump into his dress suit, so, instead of going directly to his hotel, he sat down at the Cafe de la Paix.  He was thirsty, and calling for a vermouth frappe he told the garcon to bring him also the American papers.