"Just look! I'm all dressed already."
Mr. Pelz advanced to her, his clasp closing over each of her bare arms, smile and gaze lifting.
"Rosie, you've got them all beat! Guess why I wish I was your diamond necklace."
"Roody, it's nearly seven. Don't make me ashamed for Feist."
"Guess!"
"All right, then, I guess."
"So I could always be round your neck."
His hand flew immediately to the lay of gems at her throat, a small flush rising.
"Roody, you hear me—hurry! Stop it, I tell you! You pinch." But she was warmly pink now, the shake of her head setting the heavy-carat gems in her ears waggling.
Time, probably emulating destiny, had worked kindly here; had brought to Mrs. Pelz the soft, dove-like maturity of her little swell of bosom; the white, even creamy shoulders ever so slightly too plump between the blades; the still black hair polished and waved into expensive permanence. Out of years that had first veered and finally taken course under his unquestionable captaincy, Rudolph Pelz, with some of their storm and stress written in deep brackets round his mouth, the red hair just beginning to pale and thin, and a certain roundness of back enhancing his squattiness, had come snugly and simply into harbor. Only the high cheek-bones and bony jaw-line and the rather inconveniently low voice, which, however, had the timbre of an ormolu clock in the chiming, indicating his peculiar and covert power to dominate as dynamically as ungrammatically a board of directors reckoning in millions across the mahogany.