She was in a rose-colored dressing-gown which showed a satin-like smoothness of skin at the throat and arms. Her eyes, I could see, were something between a hazel and a green, set wide apart under a Pallas Athena brow, that might have been called serene, but for some spirit of rebellion vaguely refracted from the lower part of the face. The vividness of her color, which even the flaming sweep of her gown could not altogether discount, made me think of material buoyancies, of living flesh and blood and a body freshly bathed. Her gaze was direct, disconcertingly direct. It even made me question whether or not she was reading my thought as I noted that her hands were large and white, that her mouth, for all its brooding discontent, was not without humor, and, strangely enough, that her fingers, ears, and throat were without a touch of that jewelry which I had thought peculiar to her kind. That she possessed some vague yet menacing gift of intimacy I could only too plainly feel, not so much from the undisturbed ease of her pose and the negligently open throat and arms as from the direct gaze of those searching and limpid eyes, which proclaimed that few of the poppied illusions of life could flower in their neighborhood. This discomforting sense of mental clarity, in fact, forced me into the consciousness not so much of being in the presence of a soft and luxurious body as of standing face to face with a spirit that in its incongruous way was as austere as it was alert. "You wish to see me?" she said, over her coffee-cup. My second glance showed me that she was eating a breakfast of iced grape-fruit and chops and scrambled eggs and buttered toast. "Very much," I answered. "About what?" she inquired, breaking a square of toast. "About the unfortunate position of a young gentleman who has just parted company with thirty thousand dollars!" She bent her head, with its loose and heavy coils of dark hair, and glanced at my card before she spoke again. "And what could I possibly do for him?" There was something neither soothing nor encouraging in her unruffled calmness. But I did not intend to be disarmed by any theatrical parade of tranquillity. "You might," I suggested, "return the thirty thousand." There was more languor than active challenge in her glance as she turned and looked at me. "And I don't think I even know who you are," she murmured. "But I happen to know just who you are," was my prompt and none too gentle rejoinder. She pushed back her hair--it seemed very thick and heavy--and laughed a little. "Who am I?" she asked, licking the toast-crumbs from her white finger-tips.