"Only because you're partial," she said. "I shall grow ugly one day. Perhaps—soon." With a savage energy, she set to work to completely overcome him. With a languishing expression in her eyes—eyes, which she made use of mercilessly, without giving him a moment's respite—she watched his whole being vibrate with love and adoration.
They had hardly entered the drawing-room of her flat when he threw himself at her feet, and poured forth his worship of her in the most extravagant phrases.
"Look here, Mr. Kelson," she said at length, withdrawing the hand it seemed as if he would never leave off kissing, "this is all very well; but I daresay you make love to countless other girls in this same fashion. How can I tell if you are really serious?"
"Don't I look as if I am?" he cried.
"One can never judge correctly by looks," she replied; "they are terribly deceptive. You are very emphatic in your avowals of love, but you say nothing about marriage."
"Then you do care for me! Jerusalem! How happy I should be if only I thought that!"
"Think it, then," Lilian Rosenberg said, "and let us come to an understanding. Can you afford to keep a wife—keep her, as I should expect to be kept—plenty of new dresses, jewelry, theatres, balls, motors, Ascot, Henley, Cowes?"
"I reckon I could do all that," Kelson replied. "I've just over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds in the bank, and with this 'cure' business, I'm taking on an average ten thousand per week. I would settle a hundred thousand on you, and make you a handsome allowance—a thousand a week—more if you wanted it."
"Well!" Lilian Rosenberg said after a slight pause, during which Kelson had again seized her hand and was kissing it convulsively, "to quote one of your Americanisms—I reckon I'll fix up with you. On one condition, however."
"And that," Kelson murmured, still kissing her feverishly.