“Telephoned Nelton, and told him not to say anything.”

Vi took off her hat and jacket as well as her veil, and tossed the lot into a chair.  Then she sat down in a corner of the big couch before the fire, doubled one foot under her, tapped the floor with the other, and yawned.  Lewis offered her a cigarette, took one himself, and then shared a match with her.

“It’s good of you to take it so calmly,” said Vi.  “Are you one of the fools that must always have an explanation?  I’ll give you one, if you like.”

“Don’t bother,” said Lewis, smiling.  “You’ve been bored—­horribly bored.  You looked out of the window, and saw the green things in the park, and remembered that there was only one bit in your list of humanity as green and fresh as they, and you headed straight for it.”

“Yes,” drawled Vi, “like a cow making for the freshest tuft of grass in the pasture.  Thanks; but I’m almost sorry you told me why I came.  That’s the disappointing thing to us women.  When we think we’re doing something original, somebody with a brain comes along and reduces it to first elements, and we find we’ve only been natural.”

Lewis straddled a chair, folded his arms on the back of it, and looked Vi over with a professional eye.  She was posed for a painter, not for a sculptor, but even so he found her worth looking at.  A woman can’t sit on one foot, tap the floor with the other, and lean back, without showing the lines of her body.

“Mere length,” said Lewis, “is a great handicap to a woman, but add proportion to length, and you have the essentials of beauty.  Short and pretty; long and beautiful.  D’you get that?  A short woman may be beautiful as a table decoration, but let her stand up or lie down and, presto! she’s just pretty.”

Vi reached out one long arm toward the fire, and nicked off the ash from her cigarette.  She tried to hide the tremor that Lewis’s words brought to her limbs and the color that his frankly admiring eyes brought to the pallor of her cheeks.  She was a woman that quivered under admiration.

“Have you never—­don’t you ever kiss women?” she asked, looking at him with slanted eyes.

Lewis shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh, I suppose so.  That is—­well, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember.”

For a second Vi stared at him; then she laughed, and he laughed with her.

“Oh! oh!” she cried, “I believe you’re telling the truth!”

They sat and talked.  Nelton brought in tea; then they sat and talked some more.  A distant bell boomed seven o’clock.  Vi started, rose slowly to her feet, and stretched.

“Have you got your invitation for the Ruttle-Marter fancy-dress ball next week?” she asked, stifling a yawn.

“No,” said Lewis; “don’t know ’em.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Vi.  “I’ll see that you get a card to-morrow.  I’d like you to come.  Nobody is supposed to know it, but I’m going to dance.  Will you come?”