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Adapted by CATHERINE CARR from
the Novelette of G. VERE TYLER
he w o m a n among the tossed, silken sheets and laces of the bed raised round, creamy arms above her head in a luxurious yawn, like Aphrodite rising from the foam. Two heavy plaits of dark hair lay along her sides, dwarfing the pale oval of her face to child-contours, tho there nothing of the child in her mocking eyes. Her neck was delicate and pearly-skinned against the fleshcolored ribbons of the robe-de-nuit. She lay back, after her indolent awakening, watching the bar of late morning sunlight slanting across her bosom, with the half-closed, inscrutable eyes of a dreaming animal.
“Est-ce-que mademoiselle peut la chocolat, maintenent?” With the padded foot of service, the maid was beside the bed, silver tray in hand. “C’est bon jour, aujourd’hui, et la manicure
viendra ”
“Chocolate ?
Yes, Felice ; but it is making me outrageously fat!”
“ M a i s non!
Mademoiselle est maigre, vraiment !
Mon Dieu — fat, ees eet?”
In her secret soul Felice wondered how a woman as small and lacking in fleshly charm as her mistress could be adored, as it was evident, even to her astute French eves, that mademoiselle was adored by the scores of men who came evening after evening to worship her.
She drew the mauve-colored curtains back, raised the pillows deftly, and laid the steaming tray, with its rose-wreathed chocolate-set and little mound of golden toast, on the coverlet.
“Et la robe pour la nuit, mademoiselle?” she questioned on the edge of flight. “W’at gown you weesh I prepair for zees evening, plees?”
The rose-wreathed cup paused midway to the lips of her mistress. She considered, half-smiling between disdainful lips ; then her heavy-lidded eyes lifted toward the maid.
“The blanche et noir, Felice,” she said, “and the bracelets with the chain and opals.”
Comprehension lay in Felice’s malicious smile, as she tripped away to get out the most striking of mademoiselle’s striking gowns. It meant, as she knew very well, a new man ; no doubt the Harcourt monsieur, who had appeared last evening. There was a subtle meaning in every robe in the scented wardrobe. The black-and-white meant conquest.
Over her chocolate, Nadine Girard, known in every club in New York as The Huntress, frowned with sudden memory. Some puzzlement, some gnat annoyance had buzzed thru her dreams all night, and now she understood what it was. That man last night — the big, broad, silent man with the steady eyes ; they baffled her — those eyes — and challenged her.
The Huntress smiled scornfully. She put down the cup and flung the covers back, bringing her body to the edge of the bed. Stooping, she groped for her slippers, then crossed the deep carpet to the cheval glass, and faced her image within. For a moment she gazed, head flung back haughtily ; then she spread out one white hand as one motions to a fawning dog at one’s knees.
“I am not afraid,” murmured The Huntress. “He is big and cool and different from the others — perhaps a bravo among other men — but he shall love me, and I shall laugh at him — him, too!”
(Thirteen)