“Nonsense!” De Medici smiled. “I’ve a clever idea for making love ... and I’m not at all averse to an enlarged audience....” Ballau smiled refusal and De Medici bowed slightly. “I’ll see you to-morrow then,” he said, and walked from the room. Victor Ballau stood for moments alone in his library. His eyes traveled caressingly over the luxuries that surrounded him. Beautiful things ... beautiful things ... his eyes and fingers invariably grew alive in their presence. Carved chairs that had once beckoned the vivacious and swashbuckling bodies of Florentines, Englishmen and Castilians. Books within whose covers the strange dreams of men had yellowed. Prints and cabinets, hangings and trinkets all breathing an air of romantic beginnings, survivors all of vanished splendors and obsolete dramas. He stood gazing around him.... The great centuries whispered out of the ornamental litter of the room. Lowering himself into the chair in which De Medici had sat, Ballau opened a book. His eyes, however, were unable to keep to the print. They closed as if in revery and again the weariness and pain that De Medici had noted, darkened his face. An hour later, Jane, gaunt and hollow-eyed, appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Ballau,” she said in a dull voice. He opened his eyes and stared at her in confusion. He had been dreaming. “Will there be supper after the theater tonight?” she asked. “No, Jane,” he murmured. “You can turn in.” His eyes, haunted and preoccupied—as furtive and veiled as the eyes of the man who had sat in the chair before him—followed the slow-moving figure of the housekeeper as she walked out of the doorway. CHAPTER II THE VEILED APHRODITE In which a lady of barbaric eyes smiles, sighs, and weeps—In which Eros obliges with a saxophone solo—A morning of golden shadows and an off-stage pizzicato. New York on a spring morning.... A leap of windows toward a gay sky, a carnival of windows, windows fluttering like silver pennants, unwinding in checkerboards and domino lines. A deluge of signs, a sweep of acrobatic advertisements, a circus of roof tops and a fanfare of stone, the city flings itself into a glittering panorama. It stands in bewildered pantomime. Gigantic and amazing, it hovers like an inverted abyss over a wavering pavement of hats. De Medici turned his eyes from the trumpeting geometries of the skyscrapers and looked at the young woman beside him. “We’re an intrusion,” he said close to her. The crowds drifted tenaciously around them. “Paolo and Francesca,” he smiled, “murmuring in Bedlam. Can’t we go somewhere?” His lean face regarded her dreamily as she answered: “The morning is wonderful.” “The morning is a nuisance,” he demurred. “But you! Beautiful—yes, your eyes are like gardens, night gardens. Come, we’ll go somewhere. We’ll take a cab. I want to talk to you in a gentle and persuasive voice.”