As for Jerome, he thought the members of the troupe without exception splendid; and, partly, no doubt, as a means of easing the distress in his heart, even began telling himself he was growing positively infatuated with a certain girl who did a few small rôles, but mostly sang in the chorus. Her name was Lili—an extraordinary creature, with great wide, bewitching, wicked light brown eyes which were always beaming; a mouth that existed only for eating and loving; a wealth of rich massed hair and—well, nobody ever did know how much there was underneath it—perhaps a very great deal, for Lili was deep, in her way, despite genuinely child-like qualities. She was a truly delightful person, impulsive and affectionate and a trifle flighty, with a healthy desire to be a prima donna.
Lili used to amuse herself, when Jerome came amongst them, by beaming on the poor clerk till he had to blink and would grow quite red. She had a way of gradually opening her eyes wider and wider as she beamed, which produced a really electric effect and would make any one’s pulse, pre-eminently the pulse of a clerk who had never been beamed on that way before, double and treble its accustomed beat. He didn’t dream it was she who laughed most heartily over the efforts of the comedian, and that she herself one day took round a petition, drawn up by the comedian, requesting signatures of all the male members of the troupe who would agree to adopt fashion’s latest mandate: a patent clip to hold down the ends of one’s tie and keep one’s shoulders from growing too haughty.
II
With everything vigorously under way, and the actual sailing day in sight, Xenophon Curry was calling on his friend and benefactress, Flora Utterbourne, to express for perhaps the hundredth time his overwhelming gratitude. He stirred his tea happily and looked about the little drawing room which Flora had made so much her own with the assistance of sales and auctions. Glancing about one understood Flora’s success.
The tea things stood between them on the very gate-legged table acquired at Crawl Hill, and in which the impresario insisted upon feeling a whimsical part interest. Flora had just returned from a luncheon party—they had met, as a matter of fact, on her threshold—and as they sipped and chatted she informally lifted off a hat of faun straw and figured silk, thrusting the pins back into it, with the veil still where it had been brushed up out of the way across the crown. She laid the hat aside and touched her hair comfortably. His response to the geniality of this hour of early twilight, with a small clock ticking somewhere, was very whole-hearted, though of course sentimental, because everything about the impresario was sentimental.
Some turn or other in the talk presently brought up the subject of his rings. “I’ve been noticing them,” she smiled. “It seems to me I’ve never seen so many—and some of the ‘stones’ seem quite wonderful!”
“I know,” he laughed, “there are a good many more than there ought to be, but I get so attached to each new one that drops into my hands, I couldn’t bear to give any of ’em up.”
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “Do they really come as easily as all that?”
“Oh, well,” he confided, “it’s become a sort of custom that when one of my songbirds is offered a contract by one of the big managers and has to leave me—and I want to tell you I’ve discovered more than one now famous star and given the boost to begin with!—then I get a ring in remembrance. Sometimes it will be a great big stone—like this one, you see? Then again a more modest size, like this one. It depends,” he added confidentially, “a little on the contract; but I love every single ring on my fingers exactly the same, because each one stands for a songbird.”
“A songbird who has flown away,” she murmured, her fine eyes a little sad.