"Let her down easy," Fancy suggested. "It's a love affair. She has a letter in her coat pocket, all folded up; you can see the wrinkles where it bulges out. Hat pin made of an army button, and she doesn't know enough to paint. Make her take off her coat and see if her right sleeve isn't soiled above where she usually wears a paper cuff to protect it. She is half frightened to death and she has been crying."
"All right," said Granthope. "I'll give her five dollars' worth of optimism."
Fancy put her hand in his softly. "Say, Frank, just charge this to me and be good to her, will you?"
"All right. If you like her, I'll do my best. She'll be smiling when she comes out, you see if she isn't."
As the girl went in for her reading, Mrs. Page walked into the reception-room, and nodded condescendingly. She was a dashing woman of thirty-five, full of the exuberance and flamboyant color of California. Her hair was jet black and glossy, massively coiled upon her head; her features were large, but regular and well formed; her figure somewhat voluptuous in its tightly fitting tailor suit of black. She was a vivid creature, with impellent animal life and temperament linked, apparently, to a rather silly, feminine brain. Her mouth was large, and in it white teeth shone. She was all shadows and flashes, high lights and depths of velvety black. From her ears, two spots of diamond radiance twinkled as she shook her head. When she drew off her gloves, with a manner, more twinkles illuminated her hands. Still others shone from the cut steel buckles of her shoes. She was somewhat overgrown, flavorless and gaudy, like California fruit, and her ways were kittenish. Her movements were all intense. When she looked at anything, she opened her eyes very wide; when she spoke she pursed her lips a bit too much. Altogether she seemed to have a superfluous ounce of blood in her veins that infused her with useless energy.
Fancy eyed her pragmatically, added her up, extracted her square root and greatest common divisor. The result she reached was evident only by the imperious way in which she invited her to be seated and the nonchalant manner in which, after that, she gazed out upon Geary Street.
Mrs. Page, however, would be loquacious.
"Shall I have to wait long?" she asked. "I have an engagement at eleven and I simply must see Mr. Granthope first! It's very important."
"I don't know," said Fancy coolly. "It depends upon whether he has an interesting sitter or not. Sometimes he's an hour, and sometimes he's only fifteen minutes." She spoke with a slightly stinging emphasis, examining, meanwhile, the spots on her own finger-nails.
"Oh," said Mrs. Page, and it was evident that the remark gave her an idea as to her own personal powers of attraction. "I thought Mr. Granthope treated all his patrons alike."