She shrugged her shoulders and glanced carelessly across the room.
“They are well enough,” she admitted, “but one wearies of genius on every side of one. Genius is not the best thing in the world to live with, you know. It has whims and fancies. For instance, look at these rooms—the gloom, the obscurity—and I love so much the light.”
Peter smiled.
“It is the privilege of genius,” he remarked, “to have whims and to indulge in them.”
She sighed.
“To do Andrea justice,” she said, “it is, perhaps, scarcely a whim that he chooses to receive his guests in semi-darkness. He has weak eyes and he is much too vain to wear spectacles. Tell me, you know every one here?”
“No one,” Peter declared. “Please enlighten me, if you think it necessary. For myself,” he added, dropping his voice a little, “I feel that the happiness of my evening is assured, without making any further acquaintances.”
“But you came as the guest of Mademoiselle Celaire,” she reminded him, doubtfully, with a faint regretful sigh and a provocative gleam in her eyes.
“I saw Mademoiselle Celaire to-night for the first time for years,” Peter replied. “I called to see her in her dressing-room and she claimed me for an escort this evening. I am, alas! a very occasional wanderer in the pleasant paths of Bohemia.”
“If that is really true,” she murmured, “I suppose I must tell you something about the people, or you will feel that you have wasted your opportunity.”