As these thoughts ran through his brain he turned to the oval glass in an Italian frame that hung on the wall and looked at himself with close examination. He certainly wore his forty-seven years admirably well. His dark, thick, wavy hair was all the more picturesque for its sprinkling of white. His high forehead lent him an air of intellectuality which was most misleading. His straight, black eyebrows and large, almond-shaped eyes gave him a Latin touch which seemed to indicate temperament. His nose, he told himself, was undoubtedly aristocratic, and his moustache—scrupulously lifted away from his lip—added to the effect of a well-shaped mouth and large white, regular teeth. There was a slit in his chin of which he had always been proud. Striking was the word that he applied to himself, and handsome was the one which he knew was generally used about him. The touch of humor which was his saving grace made him very well aware of the fact that with any clothes less well cut and carefully considered he might easily fall in line with the glossy villain of melodrama or with the conventional desperado so necessary to the producers of moving pictures.
With fingers as expert as those of a woman he smoothed his hair here and there, made a quick sign to his man to get out, and moved across the expensively rugged studio to the window. "I was on the point of going out to supper," he said, "when you called me up. It was very kind of you."
Beatrix turned towards him with the most disconcerting air of candor. Not for the first time he was astonished at her perfect finish, her audacious self-possession. This baby was a complete woman of the world. "No, it wasn't," she said. "I was bored. I only got to town at half-past eight and the mere thought of spending the evening with a garrulous companion—a sort of toothless watch-dog—in a house among Holland covers and the persistent smell of camphor was more than I could stand. I had no intention of being kind. Do we smoke?"
"Oh, please!" he said.
She followed him across the large, lofty room to the refectory table which had stood in the back room of the shop on Fourth Avenue for so many years, there acquiring all the age of which it could boast. A silver Jacobean box was open and in it there were Russian cigarettes upon which York's imaginary crest had been stamped. He had himself designed it.
"Thank you. How is it that you're here? The last time I saw you, you said you were going to Gloucester for the summer."
York put his face as near to the girl's round shoulder as he dared. "I went there," he said, "on the last of April, but I had to come back last week to see the architects of a new theatre. They've asked me to paint a series of panels for the foyer. It's a nuisance; but—although I dare say it's never occurred to you—there are some people in the world who must work to live." He raised his glass, adopted an expression of adoration in which there was a mixture of humbleness and confidence, and added: "I'd have come from the ends of the earth for the pleasure of seeing you to-night."
Beatrix looked at him with a smile of amused appreciation. "How well you do that sort of thing," she said. "Better than any man I know. Was it born in you, or did you achieve it?"
York placed what purported to be a Wolsey chair just out of the line of light thrown by a lamp on the table, and metaphorically hauled himself up for having gone a little too far. This imperious girl, as spoiled as a Royal Princess, who had been brought up in the belief that all she had to do was to put her finger on a bell to bring the moon and the sun and the stars to her service, needed more careful handling than a thoroughbred yearling. So York, whose business had taught him far more than the rudiments of psychology, hastened to become general again. Like the filibuster who starts out on an expedition to find hidden treasure, he had always before him the vague, exciting hope that some day he might stand towards this girl in a very different relationship. "How long are you to be in the city?"
"I must go back the day after to-morrow," said Beatrix. "I've only come in to see about a costume for a Shakespeare Pastoral that mother has arranged to give in the Queen Anne gardens. It's going to be produced by one of the long-haired tribe, and the house-party's to be assisted by a sprinkling of professionals. As it'll break the monotony of country life I'm looking forward to it, especially as I'm going to play opposite,—I think that's the word,—to a matinée idol whose profile is Grecian, though his accent is Broadway. You must come and see us."