It was arranged that the maid should be seen into a taxi to take care of the luggage. When she had been disposed of, they crossed the street for tea at the Belmont. Fluffy and Desire still walked arm-in-arm as though it was they who had been so long separated. At the table Teddy found himself left to talk to Fluffy; Desire and the man with the amused blue eyes were engaged in bantering reminiscences of the summer. The game seemed to be to pretend that you were not in love; or, if you were, that it was with some one for whom actually you didn’t care a rap. “Did it go well?” asked Teddy. “Wonderfully.” “I wish you’d tell me. Of course Desire wrote me; but I don’t know much.” While she told him, he kept stealing glances at the others. He wondered at what they were laughing; then he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t at what was being said, but at the knowledge each had of the game that was in the playing. He began to take notice of Fluffy. She had pale-gold hair--quantities of it--a drooping mouth and eyes of a child’s clearness. She had a way of employing her eyes as magnets. She would fix them on the person to whom she talked so that presently what she said counted for nothing; questions would begin to rise in the mind as to whether she was lonely, why she should be lonely and how her loneliness might be dispelled. Then her glance would fall away and she would seem to say: “I shall have to bear my burden; you won’t help me.” After that all the impulse of the onlooker was to carry her over rough places in his arms. Her voice sounded as though all her life she had been petted; her face made you feel that, however good people had been, she deserved far more. Why had Desire been so positive that he wouldn’t like her? He did; or rather he would, if she would let him. But he had the feeling that, while she was kind, she was distrustful and had fenced herself off so that he could not get near her. He had an idea that he had met her before; he recognized that grave assured air of being worthy to be loved without the obligation of taking notice of the loving. Then he spotted the resemblance, and had difficulty to refrain from laughing. In her quiet sense of beautiful importance she was like Twinkles. “It’s wonderful,” she was saying; “I never had such a part. ‘Little girl,’ Simon Freelevy said when he saw me, ‘little girl, you’ll take New York by storm.’ And I shall.” She nodded seriously. “Simon Freelevy ought to know; he’s the cleverest producer in America; I believe he was so pleased with himself that he’d have kissed me if I hadn’t had my make-up on. And then, you see, it’s called _October_, and we open in October. The idea’s subtle; it may catch on.” She spoke as though the play was a negligible quantity and any success it might have would be due to her acting. Teddy caught the amused eyes of the playwright opposite. He turned back to Janice Audrey. “What’s the plot?” he asked.