Maid and masseuse followed her into the bedroom with protesting cries.  The bedroom had been put in order.  Only the bed itself, dressed merely in a fresh white sheet and pillows, looked a little naked, for the bedclothes proper had been carried out to air.  In the center of the bed was Folly, curled up like a kitten.  Her hair had tumbled down into two thick, loose braids.  She submitted now to the gown, and wrapped herself carefully in it.  Propped high against the pillows, a braid of brown hair falling forward over each shoulder, and her bare arms lying still at her sides, she looked very demure indeed and very sweet.

“Bring tea, Marie,” she said softly, “and show in Daddy Leighton.”

CHAPTER XXXVII

LEIGHTON’S first feeling on entering Folly’s bedroom was one of despair.  All his knowledge of the highways and byways of the feminine mind was only enough to make him recognize, as he glanced about the room, that he was about to encounter more! than a personality, that he was face to face with a force.

The most illuminating thing that can be said about Folly’s bedroom is that Leighton saw the bedroom—­the whole of it—­before he consciously saw Folly.  The first impression that the room gave was one of fresh air—­the weighted air of a garden in bloom, however, rather than that of some wind-swept plain.  The next, was one of an even and almost stolid tone, neither feminine nor masculine, in the furnishings.  They were masterfully impersonal.

To Leighton, who had had the run of every grade of greasy, professional dressing-room, chaotic and slovenly beyond description, and of boudoirs, professional and otherwise, each in its appropriate measure a mirror of the character of its occupant, the detachment of this big room came as a shock.  There were only eight pieces of furniture, of which four were chairs, yet there was no sense of emptiness.  The proportions of the remaining objects would have dwarfed a far larger space.

Along the whole length of one wall stood an enormous press in mahogany, with sliding-doors.  Two of the doors were slightly open, for Folly knew that clothes, like people and flowers, need a lot of air.  Leighton caught a glimpse of filmy nothings hanging on racks; of other nothings, mostly white, stacked on deep shelves; of a cluster of hats clinging like orchids to invisible bumps; and last and least, of tiny slippers all in a row.

At right angles to the press, but well away from it, stood a dressing-table surmounted by a wide, low swivel-mirror.  The table was covered with tapestry under glass.  The dull gleam of the tapestry seemed to tone down and control the glittering array of toilet articles in monogrammed gold.  Facing the press, stood a large trinity cheval-glass, with swinging wings.  In the center of the room was the bed.  Behind the bed and on each side of it were two high windows.  They carried no hangings, but were fitted with three shades, differing in weight and color, and with adjustable porcelain Venetian blinds which could be made to exclude light without excluding air.