He jumped from the sofa as if the Chow dog had bitten him.

“Good Heavens, I never meant you to take it that way!”

She laughed, stretched up a lazy arm to him, and looked at him somewhat quizzically in the face as he kissed her finger-tips.  Although I could have boxed the silly fellow’s ears, I vow he did it in a very pretty fashion.  The young man of the day, as a general rule, has no more notion how to kiss a woman’s hand than how to take snuff or dance a pavane.  Indeed, lots of them don’t know how to kiss a girl at all.

“My dear,” she said.  “I was much more respectable sitting on the stage at tea with my horse, Sultan, than supping with you at the Savoy.  You don’t know the deadly respectability of most people in the profession, and the worst of it is that while we’re being utterly dull and dowdy, the public think we’re having a devil of a time.  So we don’t even get the credit of our virtues.  I prefer the Savoy—­and this.”  She turned to me.  “It is nice having decent people to tea.  Do you know what I should love?  I should love to have an At Home day—­and receive ladies, real ladies.  And I have such a sweet place, haven’t I?”

“You have many beautiful things around you,” said I truthfully.

She sighed.  “I should like more people to see them.”

“In fact,” said I, “you have social ambitions, Madame Brandt?”

She looked at me for a moment out of the corner of her eye.

“Are you skinning me?” she asked.

Where she had picked up this eccentric metaphor I know not.  She had many odd turns of language as yet not current among the fashionable classes.  I gravely assured her that I was not sarcastic.  I commended her praiseworthy aspirations.

“But,” said I innocently, “don’t you miss the hard training, the physical exercise, the delight of motion, the excitement, the——?”—­my vocabulary failing me, I sketched with a gesture the equestrienne’s classical encouragement to her steed.

She looked at me uncomprehendingly.

“The what?” she asked.

“What are you playing at?” inquired Dale.

“I was referring to the ring,” said I.

They both burst out laughing, to my discomfiture.

“What do you take me for?  A circus rider?  Performing in a tent and living in a caravan?  You think I jump through a hoop in tights?”

“All I can say,” I murmured, by way of apology, “is that it’s a mendacious world.  I’m deeply sorry.”

Why had I been misled in this shameful manner?

Madame Brandt with lazy good nature accepted my excuses.

“I’m what is professionally known as a dompteuse,” she explained.  “Of course, when I was a kid I was trained as an acrobat, for my father was poor; but when he grew rich and the owner of animals, which he did when I was fourteen, I joined him and worked with him all over the world until I went on my own.  Do you mean to say you never heard of me?”