“And I’d a trifling triumph too, darling, which I chose to ignore: just as I was leaving my dressing-room, Jack Whorwood, all dressed up for Tybalt, accosted me with a fatuous easy smile. ‘I want your picture, Miss Iris, with your name on it,’ he said. ‘_Do_ you?’ I said. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘Then I fear you’ll have to,’ I said. Oh, he was cross! But all the while, Sally, he was speaking I could feel the wolf....” “Better be careful,” Mrs. Sixsmith snapped. “As if I’d cater to his blue besoigns!” “Réné, Réné?” “Although I snubbed him,” Miss Iris murmured, stooping to examine upon the toilet-table a beribboned aeroplane filled with sweets, “he looked _too_ charming!” Mrs. Smee chafed gently her hands. “I must return to my Friar,” she said. “He is saying the grossest, the wickedest things!” “Mr. Smee’s sallies at times are not for young ears,” Mrs. Smee loftily observed. “His witticisms,” she added, “aren’t for everyone.” “My friend, Miss Tird, who came to watch me dress, was quite upset by his cochônneries!” “Although your little friend appears scarcely to be nine, she seems _dazed_ by her sex and power,” Mrs. Smee unfavourably commented. “I’ll have to go, I suppose,” Miss Sinquier sighed, “and see how matters stand.” “Prenez garde: for when making up, he mostly makes a palette of his hand,” Mrs. Sixsmith said. “I happen to know—because one day he caught hold of me.” Mrs. Smee protruded her tongue and drew it slowly in. “Hist!” she exclaimed. Along the corridor the call-boy was going his rounds. “First act beginners,” chirped he. Miss Sinquier quivered. “... Soften all hostile hearts and let them love me ...” she prayed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVI THE sound of rain-drops falling vigorously upon the glass roof awoke her. A few wind-tossed, fan-shaped leaves tinged with hectic autumnal colours spotted marvellously the skylight without, half-screening the pale and monotonous sky beyond. With a yawn she sat up amid her pillows, cushioning her chin on her knees. After the last night’s proceedings the room was a bower of gardenia, heliotrope, and tuberose, whose allied odours during slumber had bewildered just a little her head. Flinging back the bed-clothes, she discovered as she did so a note. “Sally,” she read, “Should you be conscious before I return, I’m only gone to market, cordially yours, R. Iris. Such mixed verdicts! I’ve arranged the early papers on your dressing-table. I could find no reference to me. This morning there were rat-marks again, and part of a mangled bat.” “Oh, those ‘atmospherics’!” Miss Sinquier complained, finding somnolently her way into the inner room. Here all was Italy—Even the gauze-winged aeroplane filled with sweets had an air of a silver water-fly from some serene trans-Alpine garden.