"Can I come and see you at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning?"
"With pleasure!"
"Good! I'll be there. Not a word to Jack, mind. Come and have a glass of champagne."
He drank his glass of champagne and watched his companion drink three. Then she floated off to greet some new-comers and Aaron made his escape. The poet called him up in the hall.
"The usual sort of crowd here," he remarked, as they left the house. "Pretty hot lot, some of those bookmakers and jockeys, but I didn't see a soul whom I'd ever suspect of getting off his own little run. What about you?"
"Come and see me at twelve o'clock to-morrow morning," was all the poet could get out of his companion that night....
Miss Pamela Keane was marvellously punctual. In a blue serge costume straight from Paris, a hat which was a marvel of simplicity, a wonderful veil and a wave of perfume, she swept into Aaron Rodd's room the next morning as eleven o'clock was striking. He handed her the clients' chair, into which she sank, a little breathless.
"Say, this is some climb," she remarked. "Don't you have any elevators in your offices on this side?"
"Plenty," he assured her. "I have a very small practice and these are out-of-the way premises."
She lifted her veil. Her face was thick with powder and her eyes seemed to him artificially brightened. There was some stuff which he didn't understand upon her lashes, and in contradistinction to these, to him, somewhat ghastly allurements, her expression was hard, her tone, as she spoke, almost rasping.