"You’re a nice boy, Teddy," she said, patting his hand. "Now, hang up your coat, and help me with the candles." She watched him as he slipped his overcoat from the trim wide shoulders, revealing all at once the clean-cut, well-tailored figure, full of elasticity and youth. Teddy Beecher always gave her a sense of well-being and pleasant content, with his harum-scarum ways and inviting impudence. As he roused no intellectual resistance in her, she was all the more sensitive to the purely physical charm in him, which she appreciated as she might appreciate the finely strung body and well-modulated limbs of a Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini. "Will I help you? Command me," he said, coming in eagerly. "Don’t you know, there’s a little silver collar about my neck, and the inscription is, ’This dog belongs to Rita Kildair.’ Jove, Rita, but you’re stunning tonight!" He stood stock-still in frank amazement. He had known her but a short while, and yet he called her by her first name—a liberty seldom accorded; but the charm he unconsciously exerted over women, and which impatiently mystified other men, was in the very audacity of his enjoyment of life, which imparted to women the precious sense of their own youth. "Really?" she said, raising her hand to her hair, that he might notice the glorious ruby. "Look here—I’ve only got a miserable thirty thousand a year, but I’ve got a couple of uncles with liver trouble and a bum heart. Say the word—I’m yours." While he said it with a mock-heroic air, there was in his eyes a flash of excited admiration that she understood and was well pleased with. "Come, Teddy," she said, a little disappointed that he did not perceive the ring. "To work. Take this taper." He took the wax, contriving to touch her fingers with feigned artlessness. "I say, Rita, who’s the mob here tonight? Do I know any one? I get the place next to you, of course?" "Begin over there," she directed. "The Enos Bloodgoods are coming; you’ve met her here." "I thought they were separated, or something." "Not yet." "By George, Rita, there’s no one like you—serving us up a couple on the verge." "That is not all—I like situations," she said, with her slow smile. "I like Elise; but as for the old boy, he can slip on a banana peel and break his neck, for all I care. "Then there’s a broker, Garraboy, Elise’s brother." "Don’t know him." "Maud Lille, who’s written clever books—a journalist." "Don’t know her—hate clever women." "Nan Charters—" "Who?" said Beecher, with upraised wick. "Nan Charters, who played in ’Monsieur Beaucaire.’" "Bully!" She smiled at his impetuousness, and continued: "Mr. Majendie and the Stanley Cheevers." "Oh, I say—not those—" "Well?" she said as he stopped. "You know the gambling story," he said reluctantly. "Club gossip."