"You needn't be," said Rawn calmly. He nodded to her bare and unadorned neck, her hair which lacked brilliants, her fingers left unjeweled. The girl caught his meaning without further speech, and it hurt her yet more.
"What could I do? Why did you bring me here, Mr. Rawn? You've made me unhappy. I've seen it, and I can't be a part of it. It doesn't seem I can go back there to work and be just the same any more, after seeing the city here! I tell you, it's got in my blood, all at once."
"No," he said evenly, "not again just the same. We outgrow ourselves, and can't go back. I'm not the same man I once was." He half-unconsciously shifted to get a glimpse of himself in the mirror.
"But now, my business proposition is very simple. It holds good for one evening, Miss Delaware. I was just going to propose that we forget all this unhappiness, and do a little pretending for one night, say for one hour or so."
IX
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and drew out something which suddenly flamed into dancing points and rays in the light that fell upon it. She stood motionless while he passed about her neck a tiny thread, delicate as if spun of moonlight. She held out her hand, and he slipped over it a gleaming ring of gems. She bent her head, and he placed a sparkling ornament in her hair. She had seen these jewels before. She turned to the glass now, her bosom heaving as she saw them gleam at her own neck, her own hands, in her own hair. She held out her hands to look at them now, and the gems flashed back challenge to her eyes, sparkling yet more brilliantly.
"It was nothing," said John Rawn tersely. "That's all that lacked. You're good as the best now. I've seen no woman in this city that is your equal in beauty. You were born for this life. Now do you understand what I mean? I say, you can carry it off!"
She turned to him, another woman, changing on the instant, something in her eyes he had never seen before. But in his own eyes there was at the time nothing save the original calm and purposefulness.
"As I was saying, then, since we can both carry it off, why not do so for an hour or so? I've read somewhere of masquerades. Why not try it?"
She turned to him, flushed, radiant, but slightly frowning, puzzled, studying him. Rawn felt the query of her look, felt also something stirring down in his nature which he grappled at once and was able to suppress. His voice was cool and low as it was before.