Her glance puzzled him, and she followed it a moment afterward with a sentence which had the effect of increasing, rather than diminishing, the obscurity in which he floundered.

“In danger of losing my head, do you mean?” she asked, “Wasn’t that question answered when I ran away?”

But the next instant she burst into a laugh of ridicule, and threw herself back into the chair upon the hearthrug, with the particular fall of drapery by which she delighted the eyes of her audience in the opera house.

“I asked your man to bring me tea, for I’m famished,” she remarked; “do you think he has forgotten it?”

“He had, probably, to go out to buy the cakes,” he replied, with a touch upon the bell which was immediately answered by Wilkins bearing the silver tray.  As she rose to make tea, Kemper took the fur boa from her shoulders and held it for a minute to his nostrils.

“You use the same perfume, I notice,” he observed.

She waited until the door had closed upon Wilkins, and then looked up, smiling, as she handed him his cup.

“There are two things one should never change,” she returned, “a perfume and a lover.”

With a laugh he tossed the fur upon the sofa.  “By Jove, you’ve arrived at the conventional morality at last.”

“Is it morality?” she rejoined sweetly, “I thought it was experience.”

“Well, any way, you’re right and I’m moral,” he remarked, “the joy of living, after all, is not in having a thing, but in wanting it.”

“Which proves, as I have said,” she concluded, “that one love is as good as a thousand.”

There was a sharp edge of ridicule to his glance; but the words he spoke were uttered from some mere impulse of audacity.

“I wonder if I taught you that?” he questioned.

Leaning slightly forward she clasped her large white hands upon her knees; and the position, while she kept it, showed plainly the rounded ample length of her figure.

“I might tell you the truth—­but, after all, why should I?” she demanded.

An emotional curiosity which was almost as powerful as love flamed in his face.  How much or how little did she feel? he wondered; and the vanity which was the inspiration of his largest as well as his smallest passion, dominated for the time all other impressions which she produced.

“Would it be possible for you to tell the truth if you tried?” he asked.

“I never try—­all the harm on earth comes from women telling men the truth.  It is the woman who tells the truth who becomes—­a door mat.  If I ever felt myself in danger of speaking the truth—­” she hesitated for a quick breath, while her eyes drew his gaze as by a cord—­“I would run away.”

It was his turn to breathe quickly now.  “You did run away—­once.”

“I ran because—­” her voice was so low that he felt it like a breath upon his cheek.

“Because?” he echoed impatiently; and the vehemence in his tone wrought an immediate change in her seductive attitude.  With a laugh that was almost insolent, she rose to her feet and looked indifferently down upon him.