Suddenly she remembered, and it was such a surprise that she blurted out:
‘D’you know, I couldn’t think who you reminded me of.
You’re strangely like Titian’s portrait of Francis I in the Louvre.’
‘With his little pig’s eyes?’
‘No, not them, yours are large, I think it’s the beard chiefly.’
She glanced at the skin under his eyes; it was faintly violet and unwrinkled.
Notwithstanding the ageing beard he was quite a young man; he could not have been more than thirty.
She wondered if he was a Spanish Grandee.
He was not very well dressed, but then foreigners often weren’t, his clothes might have cost a lot even if they were badly cut, and his tie, though rather loud, she recognized as a Charvet.
When they came to the coffee he asked her whether he might offer her a liqueur.
‘That’s very kind of you.
Perhaps it’ll make me sleep better.’
He offered her a cigarette.
His cigarette-case was silver, that put her off a little, but when he closed it she saw that in the corner was a small crown in gold.
He must be a count or something.
It was rather chic, having a silver cigarette-case with a gold crown on it.
Pity he had to wear those modern clothes!
If he’d been dressed like Francis I he would really look very distinguished.
She set herself to be as gracious as she knew how.
‘I think I should tell you,’ he said presently, ‘that I know who you are.
And may I add that I have a great admiration for you?’
She gave him a lingering look of her splendid eyes.
‘You’ve seen me act?’
‘Yes, I was in London last month.’
‘An interesting little play, wasn’t it?’
‘Only because you made it so.’
When the man came round to collect the money she had to insist on paying her own bill.
The Spaniard accompanied her to the carriage and then said he would go along the train to see if he could find a sleeper for her.
He came back in a quarter of an hour with a conductor and told her that he had got her a compartment and if she would give the conductor her things he would take her to it.
She was delighted.
He threw down his hat on the seat she vacated and she followed him along the corridor.
When they reached the compartment he told the conductor to take the portmanteau and the dispatch-case that were in the rack to the carriage madame had just left.
‘But it’s not your own compartment you’re giving up to me?’ cried Julia.
‘It’s the only one on the train.’
‘Oh, but I won’t hear of it.’
‘Allez,’ the Spaniard said to the conductor.
‘No, no.’
The conductor, on a nod from the stranger, took the luggage away.
‘I don’t matter.
I can sleep anywhere, but I shouldn’t sleep a wink if I thought that such a great artist was obliged to spend the night in a stuffy carriage with three other people.’
Julia continued to protest, but not too much.
It was terribly sweet of him.
She didn’t know how to thank him.
He would not even let her pay for the sleeper.
He begged her, almost with tears in his eyes, to let him have the great privilege of making her that trifling present.
She had with her only a dressing-bag, in which were her face creams, her night-dress and her toilet things, and this he put on the table for her.
All he asked was that he might be allowed to sit with her and smoke a cigarette or two till she wanted to go to bed.
She could hardly refuse him that.
The bed was already made up and they sat down on it.
In a few minutes the conductor came back with a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses.