Miss Skipworth. I tell you what would fetch them—a skirt-dance. I'll dance for you—like a shot. It would be no end of fun doin' it on a regular platform, and I've been studyin' Flossie Frillington, at the Inanity, till I've caught her style exactly.
"To-night is ours!"
Mr. Kempton. Oh, I say, you can give her a stone and a beatin' any day, give you my word you can. She doesn't put anythin' like the go into it you do.
[Miss S. accepts this tribute with complacency.
Mrs. Flitt. A skirt-dance will be the very thing. It's sure to please the people we shall bring over for it—and of course they'll be in the front rows. Yes, I must put that down. We ought to have a song next. Mrs. Tuberose, you promised to come and sing for us—you will, won't you?
Mrs. Tuberose. Delighted! I rather thought of doing a dear little song Stephan Otis has just brought out. It's called "Forbidden Fruit," and he wrote it expressly for me. It goes like this.
[She sits down at the piano, and sings, with infinite expression and tenderness.
"Only the moon espies our bliss,
Through the conscious clusters of clematis,
Shedding star-sweet showers.
To-morrow the world will have gone amiss—
Now I gaze in your eyes, love, I thrill to your kiss—
So let us remember naught but this:
That To-night is ours!
Yes, this passionate, perilous, exquisite night—
Is Ours!"