With a sigh of reluctance he laid down the drawing-board, selected a cigarette from a gold cigarette case and leisurely lighted it. Only after several deep inhalations did he yield his attention to the nervous bevy ranged before him. Pleasure covered the regret on his face as he surveyed them. He sat straight; studied them one by one.
“This is cruel—the most exquisite cruelty!” Aloud came exclamation at last.
He reconsidered the stuffs on the rack. Leaning over, he touched them.
“Beautiful, aren’t they? Surely the possession and feel of such things should be enough—enough.”
His gaze, again shifting, fixed upon the pansy eyes of a silver blonde whom, from the first, Dolores had admired most.
“Come closer, Dresden shepardess,” he invited.
It was all over, settled, Dolores thought. Those defeated should be the last to deny the petite creature’s claim to election, so soft were the curves of her figure, so alluring her tints of white, pink, blue and palest gold.
“Sorry to seem to disparage you, who deserve a kinder fate,” Seff was saying. “You can see at a glance that your complexion and hair are too indefinite to make for contrast with these crêpes. Perhaps one day, for some other purpose——”
His voice ebbed as does an outgoing tide. His attention veered to the girl next in line, the most striking of the natural brunettes from the outer room.
“My, my, but you are a luscious thing—a lovely, luscious thing!” Seff’s delicate finger-tips touched together sensitively. “I wish you to understand that, personally, I like you red-blooded, dark ones—prefer you, in fact. But you are too colorful for our present need. You’d make this flesh pink look ashen. Awfully sorry, my dear. A thousand thanks for the look at you. As for you, lithe gazelle——”