Errant thoughts, light as summer fleece, drifted across her mind.  Often, in such moments, she strove to realise that she was now mistress of herself; but never could completely.

“For example:  if I want to buy Roya-Neh,” she mused, biting into an enormous strawberry, “I can do it....  All I have to do is to say that I’ll buy it....  And I can live there if I choose—­as long as I choose....  It’s a very agreeable sensation....  I can have anything I fancy, without asking Mr. Tappan....  It’s rather odd that I don’t want anything.”

She crossed her ankles and lay back watching the sun-moats floating.

“Suppose,” she murmured with perverse humour, “that I wished to build a bungalow in Timbuctoo ... or stand on my head, now, this very moment!  Nobody on earth could stop me....  I believe I will stand on my head for a change.”

The sudden smile made the curve of her cheek delicious.  She sprang to her feet, spread her napkin on the polished floor, then gravely bending double, placed both palms flat on the square of damask, balanced and raised her body until the straight, slim limbs were rigidly pointed toward heaven.

Down tumbled her hair; her cheeks crimsoned; then dainty as a lithe and spangled athlete, she turned clean over in the air, landing lightly on both feet breathing fast.

“It’s disgraceful!” she murmured; “I am certainly out of condition.  Late hours are my undoing.  Also cigarettes.  I wish I didn’t like to smoke.”

She lighted one and strolled about the room, knotting up her dark hair, heels clicking sharply over the bare, polished floor.

Lacking a hair-peg, she sauntered off to her own apartments to find one, where she remained, lolling in the chaise-longue, alternately blowing smoke rings into the sunshine and nibbling a bonbon soaked in cologne.  Only a girl can accomplish such combinations.  How she ever began this silly custom of hers she couldn’t remember, except that, when a small child, somebody had forbidden her to taste brandied peach syrup, which she adored; and the odour of cologne being similarly pleasant, she had tried it on her palate and found that it produced agreeable sensations.

It had become a habit.  She was conscious of it, but remained indifferent because she didn’t know anything about habits.

So all that sunny afternoon she lay in the chaise-longue, alternately reading and dreaming, her scented bonbons at her elbow.  Later a maid brought tea; and a little later Duane Mallett was announced.  He sauntered in, a loosely knit, graceful figure, still wearing his riding-clothes and dusty boots of the morning.

Geraldine Seagrave had had time enough to discover, during the past winter, that her old playfellow was not at all the kind of man he appeared to be.  Women liked him too easily and he liked them without effort.  There was always some girl in love with him until he was found kissing another.  His tastes were amiably catholic; his caress instinctively casual.  Beauty when responsive touched him.  No girl he knew needed to remain unconsoled.