"So there is a woman, is there?" she went on, looking across the room at her companion. "Have you committed yourself already, then? Don't you remember what I told you the first night we met after the opera—that it is well to wait?"
"Yes, I remember," John admitted.
"I meant it."
He laughed good-humoredly, yet not without some trace of self-consciousness.
"The mischief was done then," he said.
"Couldn't it be undone?" she asked lazily. "Or are you one of those tedious people who are faithful forever? Fidelity," she continued, knocking the ash from her cigarette, "is really, to my mind, the most bourgeois of vices. It comes from a want of elasticity in the emotional fibres. Nothing in life has bored me so much as the faithfulness of my lovers."
"You ought to put all this into one of your books," John suggested.
"I probably shall, when I write my reminiscences," she replied. "Tell me about this woman. And don't stand about in that restless way at the other end of the room. Bring a chair close to me—there, close to my side!"
John obeyed, and his visitor contemplated him thoughtfully through a little cloud of tobacco-smoke.
"Yes," she decided, "there is no use denying it. You are hatefully good-looking, and somehow or other I think your clothes have improved you. You have a little more air than when you first came to town. Are you quite sure that you haven't made up your mind about this woman in a hurry?"