“And is that always easy?” she asked, in a tone of mere flippant banter.

A petty impulse of revenge lent sharpness to his voice.  “Easier than you think,” he responded coolly.

“Well, I suppose, I’ll have to take the punishment,” she answered, as lightly as before; and then turning to the mantelpiece again, she raised her glance to the portrait.  “I never liked it,” she commented frankly, “he’s got me in an unnatural position—­I never stood like that in my life—­and there’s an open smirk about the mouth.”

He saw her face in the admirable pose which he remembered—­the chin held slightly forward, the cheek rounded upward, the eyes uplifted—­and for an instant he waited, half hoping that her voice of wine and honey would roll from between her lips.  But she was frugal of her notes, he recalled the instant afterward.

“I’ve always considered it a pretty fair likeness,” he remarked.

“Then you’ve always considered me pretty hideous,” she flashed back in annoyance.

As she swung round upon the hearthrug, the white fur boa slipped from her throat, and he saw “the necklace of Venus” above the string of opals that edged her collarless lace blouse.

“On the contrary I admire you very much when you are in a good humour,” he observed in his genial raillery.

“Then you thought I had a temper?”

He laughed softly, as if at a returning recollection.  “A perfectly artistic one,” he answered.

Her annoyance disappeared beneath his gaze, and the smile he had but half forgotten—­a faint sweet ripple of expression, which seemed less the result of an inner working of intelligence than of some outward fascination in the curve of mouth and chin—­hovered, while he watched her attentively, upon her bright red lips.  In the making of her the soul he recognised had dissolved into the senses; and yet the accident of her one exquisite gift had conferred upon her the effect, if not the quality of genius.  Because of the voice in her throat she appeared to stand apart by some divine election of nature.

“I believe I did slap your face once,” she confessed, laughing, “but I begged your pardon afterward—­and you must admit that you were sometimes trying.”

“Perhaps—­but what’s the use of bringing all this up now?  It’s well over, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it?” she repeated softly; and he had an odd impression that her voice was melting into liquid honey.  The thought made him laugh aloud and at the sound she relapsed quickly into her indifferent attitude.

“Of course, it’s over,” she resumed promptly.  “If it were not over—­if I didn’t feel myself entirely safe—­do you think that I’d ever dare come back again?”

The absence of any hint of emotion in her words produced in him an agreeable feeling of security, and for the first time he went so close to her that he might almost have touched her hand.

“Safe?” he repeated, smiling, “then were you ever really in danger?”