"Who's using perfume around here?" asked Johnson Boller.
"What?"
"Strong—rank!" said Anthony's guest. "Don't you smell it?"
"I smell nothing," Anthony said, as an expensive pungence tickled his nostrils suddenly, "but I'll see——"
He started for the corridor and stopped short. David had left his room and was coming down—and still, it did not sound like David! David, in Anthony's shoes, six or seven sizes too large, should have been thumping clumsily; these footsteps were firm little pats, with the sharp rap of a heel once or twice on the polished floor beside the runner. More still, with no regard at all for caution, David, using his soprano voice, was humming the same little tune.
And just as pure premonition had sent Anthony's skin to crawling, just as his scalp was prickling and his eyes narrowing angrily, David was with them.
By way of raiment, David, the grip emptied, wore the daintiest tailored walking-gown, short of skirt and displaying silken stockings and patent leathers, with high, slender French heels. David's slim, round, girl-throat suggested the faintest powdering; David's abundant hair was dressed bewitchingly, with little reddish-blond curls straying down about the temples—and had one spent a morning on Fifth Avenue it would really have been rather difficult to find a more thoroughly attractive or better gowned girl than David!
Yet, in spite of her charms, Johnson Boller, who had bounced instinctively from his chair, could do no more than stare at David with the general expression of a fish new-snatched from water. Second after second he gaped before his thick:
"Who's that?"
"That's David!" Anthony said weakly.