Her arms and neck were bare. Her dress, immaterial as cobwebs, was of starbeams' restful hue. About her throat was a string of opals. They were colorful, though less so than her eyes and mouth.
She was seated on a sofa. Loftus was standing. As always, he was superiorly sent out. Other men who got their things at the same places that he got his never succeeded, however they tried, in appearing half so well.
"Do you know," Fanny continued, "she has improved vastly since that day when I saw you trying to pick her up. How did you ever manage? Tell me."
Loftus, his hands in his pockets, shrugged a shoulder.
"And she is so delightfully disdainful," Fanny ran on. "In Central Park this afternoon she turned up her nose at me. It is a very pretty nose, Royal, did you know that?"
"I know that it is a bit out of joint," Loftus condescended at last to reply.
"Dear me! Fancy that! But then the course of true love never did run smooth."
Loftus assumed an air of great weariness. "Do drop it," he said. "You know very well that I have never cared for anyone but you."
"Oh, of course," Fanny promptly and pleasantly retorted. "I may have had a doubt or two about it. But when you put this lady in a flat around the corner, then, naturally, you convinced me. It was a rather circuitous way, though, to go at it, don't you think?"
Beside her on the sofa Loftus flopped. "Why do you always go back to that?" he asked, with the same affectation of weariness.