Determination gleamed in Miss Demorest’s countenance.  “I’ll do it —­he’s spoiled many a dinner for me.  But give me room.  Don’t touch me.  I’m distilling poison like a cobra.”  She seized the gleaming bread-knife and brandished it.  “When the crisis comes, stand back.”

“Seriously, now, Lorelei has told me everything, and I want Campbell to acknowledge his mistake,” said Bob.  “The public has swallowed that royalty hoax, but there’s no use deceiving him.”

Despite her show of bravery Adoree was panic-stricken when the bell rang and Bob went to the door to explain the change of plan and invite Pope in.

The latter could be heard saying:  “That’s fine.  Me for a home-cooked dinner.  Here’s an unabridged cluster of orchids for Mrs. Wharton, too.  If I’d had time I’d have brought you a hanging-lamp or a plush album decorated with sea-shells.”  He entered the living-room with a hand extended and a smile upon his lips, then halted as if frozen.  By the time he had been introduced to Adoree he had burst into a gentle perspiration.

Certainly the personal appearance of the notorious dancer was sufficiently unexpected to shock him; she might have been anything rather than a king’s favorite; she looked far more like a prim little housewife as she helped Lorelei with her homely tasks, and the incongruity affected Pope painfully.  With involuntary suspicion he avoided her after his first stiff greeting; but his eyes followed her furtively, and he wandered slightly in his attention to Bob’s chatter.

As for Miss Demorest, she took a grim delight in his discomfort, and prepared to blast him with sarcasm, to wither him with her contempt when the moment came.  Meanwhile she listened as the two men talked, turning up her nose when Pope scored Broadway with his usual bitterness.

“He thinks that’s smart,” she reflected; but she, too, detested the Great Trite Way, and his words expressed her own distaste so aptly that she could think of no argument sufficiently biting to confound him.  She deliberately framed a stinging reference to his pose in the matter of dress, though in frankness she had to admit that he wore his gray sweater vest with an air of genuine comfort and unconsciousness.  Then she remembered, barely in time, that her own style in garments both on and off the stage was far more startling than his, and decided that she would merely be laying herself open to a disastrous counter-attack if she hurled her sarcasm in that direction; therefore she sought another opening.  She had made up her mind to begin humbling his conceit by voicing her contemptuous regard for newspaper men in general when he once more forestalled her by giving crisp expression to the very sentiments she was rehearsing.  Of course, it was all affectation, like his slovenly disregard of fashion—­and yet, she was interested to hear him tell Bob: 

“I don’t like the business—­never have.  Every time I get some money ahead I quit it and try something else.  Writing isn’t a man’s exercise, anyhow, and journalism is just a form of body-snatching.  The average reporter is a ghoul.”