It was a charming room, with pale grey walls and a pale green carpet, and very little in it except, let in as a panel, a delicate low-toned portrait of the mistress of the house, vaguely appearing through vaporous curtains, holding pale flowers, and painted with a rather mysterious effect by that talented young amateur, her cousin, Harry de Freyne. It had been his sole success in art, and had been exhibited at the Grafton Galleries under the name of The Gilded Lily. No one had ever known or was ever likely to know whether the title referred to the decorative, if botanically impossible, blossom in her hand, or to the golden hair of the seductive sitter.
Romer Wyburn paused a moment—he always paused before speaking—and then said very slowly—
"Oh! Really? You think it will look better if I don't go with you?"
He invariably spoke with the greatest deliberation, and with no expression whatever.
"Oh yes, dear, I'm sure it would," she repeated coaxingly.
"Do you mean if you go without me?"
"What else can I mean?"
"It'll look better, you think; eh? Is that the idea?"
He sat down opposite the portrait, lighted a cigarette, and thought. Then he said with ruminating interest—
"I don't see why. Why will it look so much better for me not to go with you?"