'I wish I could believe that; but knowing the sort of man you are, how can I?'
'What's come over you this morning? I suppose it must be that having me on your conscience gave you a bad night. Come on; let's go inside and bathe. Then we'll have our talk and, if you really feel you must, you can put the police on to me afterwards.'
'I'm not going to bathe with you. And you're right about my having had a bad night. I've been worrying myself silly over this thing, and I want to get it settled right away.'
Gregory saw now that he would have to go all out to win her round again, otherwise she might prove a really serious danger to him; so he said earnestly: 'Listen, Sabine. I may have been exaggerating a bit when I said that if you denounce me I will be shot. You must know that I'm not the sort of man to allow myself to be arrested while there is a fighting chance of keeping my freedom. But I might quite well be caught before I could get across the frontier. If I were, there would be nothing you could do about it afterwards. Like it or not, you would be compelled to give evidence that I am an Englishman and that, coupled with the fact that I am here under a false identity, would certainly lead to my being condemned as a spy; and in wartime spies are shot. So for both of us this is a really serious matter, and you will feel much more capable of taking a right decision about it after you have freshened yourself up with a swim.'
'I haven't brought a swimsuit.'
'That's no difficulty. I'll hire one for you.'
I… I don't like wearing things other people have used.'
'Nonsense! You know perfectly well that in a place like this they are thoroughly sterilized. What you really mean is you would prefer to display that lovely figure of yours to me in a swimsuit chosen by yourself. That is quite unnecessary when I remember so well all the hidden charms beneath anything you wear including that tiny mole on the left side of your tummy.'
A faint blush coloured her magnolia cheeks for a moment and she stamped a small well shod foot. 'Really, Gregory! It's: not fair to rake up the past; and I didn't mean to let you talk to me about that sort of thing.'
'Am I to take it, then, that you neglected to say your prayer this morning?'
Her eyes widened. 'My prayer? What d'you mean? I have no special prayer.'
'Oh yes, you have. At least, you used to say one in the old days. It went: "Holy Mary, I believe, that without Sin Thou didst conceive. And now I pray, in Thee believing, that I may Sin without conceiving".'
Too late he realized that, by implying that she might have said that prayer before coming to meet him, he had fully committed himself as aspiring again to become her lover. But the merry little rhyme did the trick. Throwing back her head she suddenly burst out laughing. Then she cried:
'Of course I remember. And every morning you used to buy flowers to set before my little statue of the Virgin, just to show that we didn't really mean to take her name in vain. What fun it was.'
Taking her gently by the arm he led her unresisting up the steps into the baths; and she made no further protest while he bought their tickets.
It was the last Friday in August and a day of brilliant sunshine; so there were far fewer people in the Roman bath than up round the Blue Pool on the higher level, yet the horseshoe terrace there was by no means as crowded as Gregory remembered it in peacetime. To bathe there was as expensive as to swim from the Excelsior on the Lido or the Bar du Soleil at Deauville, and although Budapest's hotels were full it was not with wealthy holidaymakers from other countries; but the terrace was a favourite haunt of those in the capital's smart set who remained in it for a part of the summer, so as Sabine came out to the Pool several acquaintances waved greetings to her.
Gregory took note of these salutations with silent satisfaction. She had already compromised herself the night before at the Piccadilly by accepting him as a friend, and she was doing so again. It could now be pointed out to her that, should conscience drive her to the police, she might explain away her failure to act the previous night as being due to reluctance to create a scene in public, but it would not be, easy to laugh off having come swimming with him the following morning. That, coupled with a disclosure that he had formerly been her lover, might make things decidedly awkward for her with Ribbentrop. He was in good hopes now that she would not force him to resort to such shifts in defence of his safety; but he knew from the past that she was, like so many Hungarians, fanatically patriotic and, as a woman, distinctly unpredictable; so he got down to the work of setting the clock back by every means he could think of.
It was work that entailed little effort and no hardship. There she was with her golden brown body made the more striking from having chosen a white elastic swimsuit, and looking more like a million dollars than most things one sees in Vogue. She could swim like a fish and dive like a heron. In the great bath there were rubber seahorses, dolphins and a huge coloured ball to play with. As a background there were a. score of other bathers and two score more lounging round the pool, with a lot of pretty women among them; but they served only to throw her up as their superior. Laughing and romping they went in and out until after half an hour they had just pleasantly tired themselves. Then Gregory piloted her to a rubber mattress that was out of earshot from other people and, as she stretched herself on it, sat down on a cushion beside her. Signalling a waiter he sent for two champagne cocktails, and as the man went off said to Sabine:
'Now, tell me about yourself.'
'It's for you to tell me about yourself,' she replied with a sudden return to gravity.
He shook his head. 'Not just yet. I don't think we are going to quarrel, but we might; and I'm much too fond of you to run the least risk of that before I've learnt what has been happening to you these past few years.'
'If you were all that interested you could have written to find out.'
'No. You know as well as I do that we agreed we wouldn't write because letters would only make our craving for one another greater.'
'That's true. And they probably wouldn't have found me anyway; because after our brief romance I travelled quite a lot mostly in Italy.'
'Tell me about your marriage.'
'That was in the autumn of nineteen thirty-eight. Kelemen Tuzolto was a nice person. He was cultured, intelligent and very distinguished looking. I can't honestly tell you that I worshipped the ground he walked on, but he was a man a woman could respect, and I had a great fondness for him.'
'It sounds as if he was a good bit older than yourself.'
'He was.'
'For that matter, I am. You can't be much more than twenty-eight, and I'm over forty.'
She gave him a contemplative look from under her long lashes. 'I think you will still be attractive to women when you are sixty. It's not your lean face and muscular body so much as your mental vitality. No one would ever be bored while in your company. Anyhow, twelve years or so isn't much between a man and a woman, and personally I've always hated being pawed by empty-headed children who think they are irresistible because they have just put on their first uniform. No, Kelemen wasn't terribly exciting and he was a little on the wrong side of fifty, but he was one of the nicest people I've ever known.'
'From the way you speak of him I take it that he is dead?'
'Yes. He died about eighteen months ago from a heart attack. It was an awful shock, and I've been terribly restless ever since.'