Collis grinned. ‘Of course you are. You’re supposed to swoon at my feet. You’re supposed to go home this evening and think about nothing else but me, and how I’m going to call for you on Saturday afternoon and take you riding.’

‘I believe my horse is lame. He caught his foot in a railroad line on Hudson Street.’

‘I can lend you a mare. I have a beautiful mare called Hopeful.’

‘Hopeful?’ She smiled. ‘That’s a perfect name.’

The waiter brought Delphine’s ice, and she began to eat it with her long-handled spoon. Collis watched her, and the more he watched her, the more he desired her. He hadn’t fallen so immediately and passionately for anyone since he was fifteen years old, when he had sat for hours on the back stairs, hoping to catch a glimpse of their kitchen maid, who was a green-eyed, big-breasted Italian girl, and whose very apron, rustling up the stairs, had made him squeeze his eyes tight shut with frustrated lust. There was more to Delphine than feelings of lust, however. There was a sharp, piquant personality that he knew he was going to have to trounce. She was demure, but she was self-willed and she needed bridling.

‘I believe you’re suspicious of me,’ said Collis.

Delphine licked ice from the bottom of her spoon. ‘Suspicious? Why should I be?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps you’ve heard stories about me that made you leery.’

She looked down at her dish. ‘You are a flatterer, aren’t you? First you flatter me, and now you’re flattering yourself. Where on earth would I have heard stories about you?’

‘I’m not exactly unknown in New York,’ replied Collis. ‘And you know how stories get about.’

‘What sort of stories?’

He shrugged. He definitely felt that he was on the defensive end of this conversation, no matter how much he tried to push her.

‘Well … stories,’ he said. ‘Stories of, well, escapades.’

‘You have escapades?’ she asked him. ‘Is that what you do during the day, instead of working? You have escapades?’

Collis felt slightly hot. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘sometimes.’

‘And people tell stories of your escapades?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

Delphine laid down her spoon and looked at him boldly. ‘You’re almost a legendary figure then, in your own time?’

He said, tightly: ‘You’re teasing me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you want to do that?’

‘Because I want to get to know you better,’ she said, ‘and because there is no quicker way of doing it than to tease. When you tease, people spring to the defence of everything they love dearest, and so you can discover what they love dearest in just a few minutes.’

‘Have you found out what I love dearest?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I mean, I guessed it when I first saw you, but now you’ve told me for yourself.’