When he had pressed the button of the apartment, he was kept waiting--kept waiting so long that he rang twice. On the other side Twinkles was barking furiously; then he heard the soft swish of approaching garments. The door opened. Through the crack he could just make out her face. “Don’t come in till I hide,” she warned him in a whisper. “Every one’s out, except me and Twinkles. I’m halfway through dressing.” She retreated, leaving the door ajar. When she had fled across the hall into the passage, she called to him, “You may enter.” He closed the door and listened in the discreet silence. She was in her bedroom. She had made a great secret of her little nest. She had told him about the pictures on the walls, the Japanese garden in the window, and the queer things she saw from the window when she spied across the air-shaft on her neighbors. She had a child’s genius for disguising the commonplace with glamour. Of this the name she had given him, which was known to no one but her and himself, was an example. She made every hour that he had not shared with her bristle with mysteries by sly allusions to what had happened in it Her bedroom was a forbidden spot; she deigned to describe it to him and left his imagination to do the rest. In his lover’s craving to picture her in all her environments--to be in ignorance of nothing that concerned her--he had often begged her to let him peep across the threshold. She had invariably denied him, putting on her most shocked expression. He walked into the front-room; it was littered with presents, received and to be given, and their torn wrappings. She heard him. “You mustn’t go in there,” she called. “Then where am I to go?” “Bother. I don’t know. You can stand in the passage and talk to me if you like.” For a quarter of an hour he leant against the wall, facing her closed door. While they exchanged remarks he judged her progress by sounds. Sometimes she informed him as to their meaning. “It’s my powder-box that I’m opening now.--What you heard then was the stopper of my Mary Garden bottle.--Shan’t be long. Why don’t you smoke?” He didn’t want to smoke, but when she asked him a second time, her question had become an imperative. Her voice reached him muffled; by the rustling she must be slipping on her skirt. “I’m keeping you an awfully long while, Meester Deek; you’re very patient.” There was a lengthy pause. Then: “Of course it isn’t done in the best families, but we’re different and, anyhow, nobody’ll know. I’ve drawn down the shades.--If you promise to be good, you can come inside.” She was seated at her dressing-table before the mirror, adjusting her broad-brimmed velvet hat. “Hulloa!” She did not turn, but let her reflection do the welcoming. “I haven’t allowed many gentlemen to come in here.” She seemed to be saying it lest he should think himself too highly flattered. He bent across her shoulder, asking permission by his silence.