Bill seized his hat and departed.
Ten minutes later, a taxi deposited him at 487, Pont Street. He rang the bell and executed a loud rat-tat on the knocker. The door was opened by a grave functionary to whom Bill nodded with the ease of long acquaintance.
“Morning, Chilvers, Mrs. Revel in?”
“I believe, sir, that she is just going out.”
“Is that you, Bill?” called a voice over the banisters. “I thought I recognized that muscular knock. Come up and talk to me.”
Bill looked up at the face that was laughing down on him, and which was always inclined to reduce him—and not him alone—to a state of babbling incoherency. He took the stairs two at a time and clasped Virginia Revel’s out-stretched hands tightly in his.
“Hullo, Virginia!”
“Hullo, Bill!”
Charm is a very peculiar thing; hundreds of young women, some of them more beautiful than Virginia Revel, might have said “Hullo, Bill,” with exactly the same intonation, and yet have produced no effect whatever. But those two simple words, uttered by Virginia, had the most intoxicating effect upon Bill.
Virginia Revel was just twenty-seven. She was tall and of an exquisite slimness—indeed, a poem might have been written to her slimness, it was so exquisitely proportioned. Her hair was of real bronze, with the greenish tint in its gold; she had a determined little chin, a lovely nose, slanting blue eyes that showed a gleam of deepest cornflower between the half-closed lids, and a delicious and quite indescribable mouth that tilted ever so slightly at one corner in what is known as “the signature of Venus.” It was a wonderfully expressive face, and there was a sort of radiant vitality about her that always challenged attention. It would have been quite impossible ever to ignore Virginia Revel.