But she showed no signs of making love to him to-night. She received him, as was already stated, with a shocked air. "It is dreadfully late," she said, giving him her hand. "You ought not to do it. You know that you ought not to do it." He kept her hand until she had again seated herself on the cachemire lounge. Then he sat down beside her. Her type of beauty had been called that of a serpent. It was true that her present posture on the lounge oddly resembled a sort of coil. Her face wore at nearly all times a warm paleness; its color, or rather its lack of color, had little variation. Her hair was black as night; her eyes luminous, large, and very dark; her head small, her figure lissome and extremely slender, her shoulders narrow and falling. She could not be ungraceful, and her grace was always what in another woman would have been called unique awkwardness. She appeared, now, to be gazing at Goldwin across one shoulder. Her crimson dress was in a tight whorl about her feet. She had a twisted look, which in any one else would have suggested an imperiled anatomy. But you somehow accepted her at first sight as capable of a picturesque elasticity denied to commoner _physiques_. "I dropped in only for a minute," said Goldwin. "I wanted to tell you about the dinner." "Well? Was it nice?" "Immensely. There was only one woman, but a marvelous woman. She is Hollister's wife. I feel as if I'd been hearing a new opera by Gounod. Don't ask me to describe her." Mrs. Lee was watching the speaker's face with great intentness. It was a face that she knew very well; she had given it several years of close study. "She is handsome, then?" "She's exquisite. She is going to take things by storm this winter. She wants to do it, too. And I mean to help her." "Who was she?" "I don't know. And I don't care. I'm her devoted friend. I hope you will be. I want you to call on her." "Are you crazy?" said Mrs. Lee. She said it so quietly and slowly, as was her wont to say all things, that she might have been making the most ordinary of queries. "Yes," laughed Goldwin, "quite out of my head." "Do you think I will go and see a woman I don't know, merely because you ask me to do it?" He let his eyes dwell steadily upon her pale, small, piquant face, lifted above the long, rounded throat, on which sparkled a slim gorget of rubies, to match her dress. "You've done things that I wanted you to do before now," he said softly. "You'll do this, I am sure." She put one hand on his arm. The hand was so tiny and white that it seemed to rest there as lightly as a drifted blossom. "Will you tell me all about her?" she said, in her measured way. "I told you that I couldn't describe her. She's like flowers that I've seen; she's like music that I've heard; she is like perfumes that I have smelt. There's poetry for you. You're fond of poetry, you say."