She was cheered up to an unwonted pitch by the time the dinner was over. As she sat, flushed, mettlesome with wine, thrilling to his advances, he plied her artfully, and she responded with less and less discretion. She could not conceal her impulse towards him.
"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked, her eyes burning.
"Indeed you are—you're beautiful!" he said, his hand resting on hers.
"But I don't want to be beautiful—that's what you are when you're queer and woozly—like the girls Maxim paints," she pouted. "They're awful frights—they're never pretty. I want to be just pretty, not handsome or good-looking or anything apologetic like that—that's what men call a girl when she can't make good with her profile. You've got to tell me I'm pretty, Blan, or I won't be satisfied."
"You certainly are pretty," he laughed, as he filled her glass.
"That makes me almost happy again," she mused. "Let's forget everything and everybody else in the world. It's funny how I've been thinking about you and wondering if I'd ever see you again. I had a good mind to put a personal in the Chronicle. It seemed to me as if I simply had to see you, all this week. Wasn't it funny at Carminetti's? I guess I was struck by lightning that time. You certainly did wireless me. It's fierce to own up to it, Blan, but I like you. I've stood men off ever since I was old enough to know what they wanted, but you've got me hypnotized. How did you do it?" She laughed restlessly.
"Why, if I hadn't thought you were a little too thick with Granthope, I would have looked you up before."
"I haven't been there for a week. The wide, wide world for mine, now."
"That's pretty tough, to fire you after you'd been with him for two years, isn't it?"
"I don't want to talk about that, really, Blan; it's all right."