"No! And I don't wish to know anything about it."
"Quite so," he said, approvingly. "That being the case, you know all about it. The tickets are to be sold by the one hundred perfectly beautiful girls in New York. You head the list."
She turned her face to him, a sneer on her lips. But before she could speak he said, apologetically:
"I know it isn't a subtle compliment. It happens to be a fact. There is going to be tremendous pressure brought to bear on me for places on the corps. I tell you this because your best friends will drive you crazy asking you to use your influence with me. People who decry favoritism always expect favors. I'd do anything for you. But I can't have any but perfectly beautiful ones. I simply can't!"
She looked at him with irrepressible interest. Then, remembering her position, said, coldly, "Will you please leave now and never come back?"
He went on: "It is going to make enemies for you. That will be your first payment for being famous. You will be Number One of the perfectly beautiful hundred because God made you what you are and not because you are my wife—"
"I am not!"
"—to be. You didn't let me finish. Tell your friends you can't. If they pester you, tell 'em flatly you won't. And for Heaven's sake don't use the photograph of your pearls any more, nor the Crane portrait. Use the picture Vogue had last week. Or get some fresh ones and give La Touche an order to supply 'em to the reporters. They won't cost you a cent that way, because they print his name. Good-by, Grace."
He held out his hand. She quickly put hers behind her back. His face thereat lighted up.
"Ah, you love me!" he exclaimed. "It was only a question of time, Empress. And you will never know how much I love you until you realize what it costs me to go away from here, unkissing, unkissed, and yet without regrets! But some day—" He paused, and then, with a fierce hunger that made his voice thick, "Some day I'll eat you!"