So much was she playing a part of long ago that instinctively she had used her old invincible gesture of lightly touching a man's sleeve. That also was easier by telephone. "I could lend a good deal," twanged the voice of the buyer along the wires. "I could lend a good deal." "Very well then," said Dorothy. "Lend _me_ the money." "By telephone? Not good enough. Come, come, let's be frank, let's be brutally frank. You know you're worth twenty Derby winners to me; but, as I said, women are more capricious than horses. I'm no longer a schoolboy. Are you in earnest or not?" "Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "Why should you think I wasn't?" "So much in earnest that you'll come to my rooms this afternoon and tell me so?" "Yes, if you like," she replied, without hesitating. "But you must prove to me that you're in earnest too. Send me something on account." "How much do you want?" "Oh, I don't know," she said. "About fifty thousand pounds I suppose." Dorothy's sense of proportion about large sums of money had been destroyed by her husband's extravagant betting. When one lives with a man who will win £50,000 at Ascot and lose it all and more the following week, it is difficult to preserve a table of comparative values. She supposed that £50,000 would represent about half the price of Clare, and the importance she attributed to Clare gave money such a relative unimportance that she saw nothing even faintly ridiculous in demanding a sum of this magnitude from Houston. Perhaps he was impressed by the size of her demand into believing that she really was in earnest about accepting his proposals; even a financier like himself might be excused for supposing that a woman, one of the most beautiful women in England and a countess to boot, does not ask for £50,000 without being in earnest. At the same time it appealed to his sense of humor that any woman, even England's most beautiful countess, should ask for £50,000 by telephone. "Why, it's not even a note of hand," he chuckled, and his laugh, traveling from Albany to Halfmoon Street along the wires, lost its mirth on the way and reached Dorothy with the sound of a dropped banjo. "Well, I must have something to prove you're in earnest," she argued, fiercely. "Tony is on his way to see you now. He'll be with you in another minute. Tell him that as a friend you can't let him sell Clare. Offer him enough to tide him over the Derby. I'm willing to risk everything on that." "Are you trying to tell me that if Clarehaven pulls off the Derby our arrangement is canceled? Ring off. Nothing doing, dear lady." Away in Albany she heard a bell shrill; it was like a prompter's warning of the play's ending.