She protested.

He passed his hands across his eyes and confessed that he had got mixed up in his meals the last few days.

Then an idea struck him.
"If I skip afternoon tea, and dinner, and supper, and petit dejeuner, and have two breakfasts running," he exclaimed brightly, "I shall begin fair again." And he laughed, not loud, but murmuringly, for the first time.
They went round the Casino to the front of the Hotel de Paris, their natural parting place.

But there, on the steps, with legs apart, stood the wretch with the evil eyes.

He looked at her from afar, banteringly.
Defiance rose in Zora's soul.