It was his turn to breathe quickly now. "You did run away—once."
"I ran because—" her voice was so low that he felt it like a breath upon his cheek.
"Because?" he echoed impatiently; and the vehemence in his tone wrought an immediate change in her seductive attitude. With a laugh that was almost insolent, she rose to her feet and looked indifferently down upon him.
"Oh, that's over long ago and we've both forgotten. I came to-day only to ask the honour of your presence at my first concert."
An impulse to irritate her—to provoke her into an expression of her hidden violence—succeeded quickly the curiosity she had aroused; and he felt again the fiendish delight with which, as a savage small boy, he had prodded the sleeping wild animals in their cages in the park.
"I'm not sure that I can arrange it," he responded, "I may be off on my honeymoon, you know."
"Ah, yes," she nodded while he saw a perceptible flicker of her heavy eyelids, "but when, if I'm not impertinent, does the interesting event take place? I might be able to postpone my concert," she concluded jestingly.
He shook his head. "You can't do that because I expect it to last forever."
"One usually does, I believe, but it is easy to miscalculate. Have you a photograph visible of the lady?"
He shook his head, but with the denial, his glance travelled to a picture of Laura upon his desk; and crossing the room, she took it up and returned with it to the firelight, where she dropped upon her knees in order to study it the more closely.