Ten minutes later the door opened part way again."Brace yourself," she called laughingly."I'm coming."A breathless pause and the door swung wide.He stared with eyes amazed and bewitched.There is no more describing the effects of a harmonious combination of exquisite dress and exquisite woman than there is reproducing in words the magic and the thrill of sunrise or sunset, of moonlight's fanciful amorous play, or of starry sky.As the girl stood there, her eyes starlike with excitement, her lips crimson and sensuous against the clear old-ivory pallor of her small face in its frame of glorious dark hair, it seemed to him that her soul, more beautiful counterpart of herself, had come from its dwelling place within and was hovering about her body like an aureole.Round her lovely throat was the string of emeralds.
Her shoulders were bare and also her bosom, over nearly half its soft, girlish swell.And draped in light and clinging grace about her slender, sensuous form was the most wonderful garment he had ever seen.The great French designers of dresses and hats and materials have a genius for taking an idea--a pure poetical abstraction--and materializing it, making it visible and tangible without destroying its spirituality.This dress of Susan's did not suggest matter any more than the bar of music suggests the rosined string that has given birth to it.She was carrying the train and a pair of long gloves in one hand.The skirt, thus drawn back, revealed her slim, narrow foot, a slender slipper of pale green satin, a charming instep with a rosiness shimmering through the gossamer web of pale green silk, the outline of a long, slender leg whose perfection was guaranteed by the beauty of her bare arm.
His expression changed slowly from bedazzlement to the nearest approach to the old slumbrous, smiling wickedness she had seen since they started.And her sensitive instinct understood; it was the menace of an insane jealousy, sprung from fear--fear of losing her.The look vanished, and once again he was Freddie Palmer the delighted, the generous and almost romantically considerate, because everything was going as he wished.
"No wonder I went crazy about you," he said.
"Then you're not disappointed?"
He came to her, unclasped the emeralds, stood off and viewed her again."No--you mustn't wear them," said he.
"Oh!" she cried, protesting."They're the best of all.""Not tonight," said he."They look cheap.They spoil the effect of your neck and shoulders.Another time, when you're not quite so wonderful, but not tonight."As she could not see herself as he saw her, she pleaded for the jewels.She loved jewels and these were the first she had ever had, except two modest little birthday rings she had left in Sutherland.But he led her to the long mirror and convinced her that he was right.When they descended to the dining-room, they caused a stir.It does not take much to make fashionable people stare; but it does take something to make a whole room full of them quiet so far toward silence that the discreet and refined handling of dishes in a restaurant like the Ritz sounds like a vulgar clatter.Susan and Palmer congratulated themselves that they had been at the hotel long enough to become acclimated and so could act as if they were unconscious of the sensation they were creating.
When they finished dinner, they found all the little tables in the long corridor between the restaurant and the entrance taken by people lingering over coffee to get another and closer view.And the men who looked at her sweet dreaming violet-gray eyes said she was innocent; those who looked at her crimson lips said she was gay; those who saw both eyes and lips said she was innocent--as yet.A few very dim-sighted, and very wise, retained their reason sufficiently to say that nothing could be told about a woman from her looks--especially an American woman.She put on the magnificent cloak, white silk, ermine lined, which he had seen at Paquin's and had insisted on buying.And they were off for the opera in the aristocratic looking auto he was taking by the week.
She had a second triumph at the opera--was the center that drew all glasses the instant the lights went up for the intermission.There were a few minutes when her head was quite turned, when it seemed to her that she had arrived very near to the highest goal of human ambition--said goal being the one achieved and so self-complacently occupied by these luxurious, fashionable people who were paying her the tribute of interest and admiration.Were not these people at the top of the heap? Was she not among them, of them, by right of excellence in the things that made them, distinguished them?
Ambition, drunk and heavy with luxury, flies sluggishly and low.
And her ambition was--for the moment--in danger of that fate.
During the last intermission the door of their box opened.At once Palmer sprang up and advanced with beaming face and extended hand to welcome the caller.
"Hello, Brent, I _am_ glad to see you! I want to introduce you to Mrs.Palmer"--that name pronounced with the unconscious pride of the possessor of _the_ jewel.
Brent bowed.Susan forced a smile.
