Part 21 (2/2)
Alison paused near the centre of the room, shrugging her wrap from her shoulders and dropping it carelessly on the table. He saw her shoot swift glances round her with bright, prying eyes.
”I'm afraid I'm not enough of a genius to starve,” he said; ”but anyway, here's where I write.”
”How interesting!” she drawled in a tone that conveyed to him the impression she found it anything but that. And then, a trace sharply: ”Please shut the door.”
He lifted his brows in surprise, said ”Oh?” and turning back did as bid. At the same time Alison disposed herself negligently in a capacious wing-chair.
”Yes,” she took up his monosyllable; ”it's quite as important as all that. I don't wish to be overheard. Besides,” she added with nonchalant irrelevance, ”I do want a cigarette.”
Silently Staff found his metal cigarette-safe and offered it, put a match to the paper roll held so daintily between his lady's lips, and then helped himself.
Through a thin veil of smoke she looked up into his serious face and smiled bewitchingly.
”Are you thrilled, my dear?” she asked lightly.
”Thrilled?” he questioned. ”How?”
She lifted her white, gleaming shoulders with an air of half-tolerant impatience. ”To have a beautiful woman alone with you in your rooms, at this hour o' night ... Don't you find it romantic, dear boy? Or aren't you in a romantic mood tonight? Or perhaps I'm not sufficiently beautiful ...?” She ended with a charming little petulant moue.
”You know perfectly well you're one of the most beautiful women in the world,” he began gravely; but she caught him up.
”One of--?”
”To me, of course--you know the rest: the usual thing,” he said. ”But you didn't come here to discuss your charms--now did you?”
She shook her head slightly, smiling with light-hearted malice. ”By no means. But, at the same time, if I've a whim to be complimented, I do think you might be gallant enough to humour me.”
But he was in anything but a gallant temper. Mystery hedged his thoughts about and possessed them; he couldn't rid his imagination of the inexplicable circ.u.mstances of the man who had broken into his rooms to steal nothing, and the knot of velvet ribbon that had dropped from nowhere to his study floor. And when he forced his thoughts back to Alison, it was only to feel again the smart of some of the stinging things she had chosen to say to him that night during their discussion of his play, and to be conscious of a certain amount of irritation because of the effrontery of her present pose, a.s.suming as it did that he would eventually bend to her will, endure all manner of insolence and indignity, because he hoped she would marry him.
Something of what was pa.s.sing through his mind as he stood mute before her, she read in his look--or intuitively divined.
”Heavens!” she cried, ”you're as temperamental as a leading-man. Can't you accept a word or two of criticism of your precious play without sulking like--like Max does when I make up my mind to take a week's rest in the middle of the season?”
”Criticise as much as you like,” he said; ”and I'll listen and take it to heart. But I don't mind telling you I'm not going to twist this play out of all dramatic semblance at your dictation--or Max's either.”
For a moment their glances crossed like swords; he was conscious from the flicker in her eyes that her temper was straining at the leash; and his jaw a.s.sumed a certain look of grim solidity. But the outbreak he expected did not come; Alison was an artiste too consummate not to be able to control and mask her emotions--even as she did now with a quick curtaining of her eyes behind long lashes.
”Don't let's talk about that now,” she said in a soft, placating voice.
”That's a matter for hours of business. We're getting farther and farther away from my errand.”
”By all means,” he returned pleasantly, ”let us go to that at once.”
”You can't guess?” She unmasked again the battery of her laughing eyes.
He shook his head. ”I'll give you three guesses.”
He found the courage to say: ”You didn't come to confess that I'm in the right about the play?”
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