“It’s not the sort of thing you like, I know. But I’m sick of comedy and that’s all I’m ever offered, here. And I’m sick of New York. Well, make me an offer of the English rights--Only--I’m no bank, Mark.” She swaggered to the piano and tamely played a few bars of the Merry Widow waltz. She hadn’t Olive Ilden’s grace, so seated, and the rose gown seemed sallow against the black of the piano. She had finished her scene. Mark saw the familiar stir of her throat as she hid a yawn. He promised to hurry the business of the English rights to the melodrama and took his leave. What had he feared? He tried to think, in the corridor. Recapture, perhaps, by this woman who wasn’t, after all, half as wicked as others. Her new elegance hadn’t moved him. The stage did refine people! Cora had the full air of celebrity. She was now controlled, vainer. She might still be a shrew. He saddened, ringing for the lift, and thought of Cosmo Rand’s future if “Red Winter” failed in London. The elevator deposited a page with a silver bucket and this went clinking to Cora’s door. Rand and she would drink champagne. Mark sank pondering to the lounge and stopped to buy a cigar, there. It was almost one o’clock. Many of the lights had been turned out. The threaded marble lost sheen in the smoky gloom. Parties ebbed from the supper room and a wedge of dressed men waved to Mark. A candy merchant in the lead bawled to him and Mark went to be introduced to an English actress on the millionaire’s arm. She swayed, gracious and tipsy, involved in a cloak of jet velvet, her voice murmurous as brushed harp strings emerging from the pallor of her face above the browning gardenias on the cloak. She asked, “Like this wrap? Makes me feel like a very big black cigar--I should have a very broad red and gold band.” The men pressed about her fame sniggered, respecting this lovely myth. She was assigned in legend to the desire of princes. The candy merchant grinned, cuddling her hand on his waistcoat. She tapped the brass edge of the turning door with a gardenia stem and smiled at Mark’s silk hat, then at the millionaire. “Am I talking too loud, cherished one?” “Shout your head off,” the candy merchant said, “It’s a free country.” “Oh, only the bond are free,” she proclaimed. She told Mark, “Bond Street’s getting frightfully shabby. Max Beerbohm says--I do look rather like a very big black cigar, don’t I?--Do stop pulling my arm, you dear, fat thing!” “The car’s here, honey.” “How dear of the car! We’re going to sup somewhere, aren’t we? Oh, no, to bed.--Like a very big, black cigar--”