Myrna made a wry grimace. What was the use of all that? What did they want? And what rubbish! A man whose work was incomparable, that all the world was going crazy over! And what, after all, did old Bidelot and her father know about it, anyway? Old Bidelot, for example, couldn't make a piece of clay resemble a doughnut, except for the hole, if he tried for a thousand years. And as for her father--Myrna choked a laugh.
She glanced at her watch again--and then, quickly, out of the window. It was ten minutes past five, and the car was slowing up in front of the studio. In twenty minutes the others would be here--she had told _them_ to be prompt. Some day, it was very possible, she might marry Jean--but not yet. She was far too well contented with her life as it was! She had managed Jean and his tentative outbursts--for his docility, as she dubbed it, had not been mere tameness--with perfect success for two years; and now, if, as she was somewhat inclined to surmise, his actions of last evening presaged another, she was quite capable of managing that--for twenty minutes.
She alighted from the car, and, instructing her chauffeur that he need not wait, ran up the steps of the sort of stoop that was over the concierge's door and apartment beneath. Hector's red head and doll's-blue eyes, for once, a little to her surprise, were not in evidence on the arrival of a car. The front door, however, was not locked. She pushed it open, entered the hallway, crossed to the door of the salon, and knocked. There was no answer. There was, however, nothing strange about that--Jean, probably, was in the studio proper, the _atelier_ beyond. Well, she would surprise him!
She opened the salon door softly, closed it softly, stepped into the centre of the large, magnificently appointed room, whose decorations and remodelling she and her father had planned; and, calmly unbuttoning her long glove, stood looking around her. And then her fingers held quite rigidly on a glove button. She had not seen him as she had entered! Jean was rising from a divan behind her, near the door. Her arm, still extended, the other hand still on the glove button, she turned her head and shoulders like a statue on a pivot, to watch him in amazement. Without a word, he had stepped swiftly to the door, locked it--and now he was putting the key in his pocket.