For a moment John's face reddened, and he looked the awkwardness of his state of mind, his eyes shifting from the boot to Marien's face and back again.
Her face took on an amused smile, and the boot wiggled suggestively.
"Oh," exclaimed John, blushing with fresh confusion at his own dullness as he bent forward and began to struggle with the buttons of the boot.
"You see," he explained presently, still worrying with the combination of the first button, "you see--well, I guess I don't know women very well."
"Stage women!" John added, as if by an afterthought.
"Stage women," affirmed Marien loyally, "are no different from other women--only wiser." Then she tagged her speech sententiously with, "They have to be. Careful! You will tear the buttons off. And you--you are pinching me!"
"I beg your pardon," stammered John. "But there are so very many of these buttons."
After an interval during which Marien had appeared to watch his labors with amused interest, she asked, with mocking humor:
"Are you hurrying or delaying? I can't quite make out."
But John was by this time enjoying the to him novel situation, and merely chuckled happily in reply to this thrust. When the shoes were off, by a mystifying movement Marien snuggled first one stockinged foot and then the other into the gold embroidered slippers and with a sigh of contentment appeared to float among her pillows, while she contemplated with smiling attention the face of Hampstead. Presently she asked smiling:
Feeling himself drifting farther and farther under the personal spell of this magnetic woman, and entirely willing to be enthralled, John answered her only with his eyes.
"That's the Ursus look," she laughed softly, as if it pleased her.
A silver cigarette case was on a tabaret within reach of her hand.
John declined, a trifle embarrassed by the proffer. Miss Dounay lighted one and puffed a small halo above her head before she looked across at him again and asked quizzically:
"And I do not think women should," Hampstead replied, with level eyes.
"It is a horrid habit," she confessed, "but this business will drive women to do horrid things. Listen, Hampstead. It's hard for a man; you've found that out, and you're only beginning. It's harder for a woman; the despairs, the disappointments, the bitter lonelinesses,--the beasts of men one meets! But--" With a shrug of her shoulders she suddenly broke off her train of thought, and turning an inquiring glance on Hampstead asked: