Again the imperious call and challenge flashed between us as I took a seat opposite hers where I could study her features while I tossed my chips on the table. She looked up at once and I held her with my gaze. For the first time our glances met. I was oblivious of my surroundings. The brilliant room, the gay crowd, the alert croupier, all sank into nothingness as I focussed my eyes on hers, resolved that in this first interchange I should not yield. Her eyes, amazingly blue, looked into mine for a long instant, then dropped to the Cross of St. Botolphe which glittered on my shirt-bosom. I wore no other jewels save the agate-and-iron signet ring which his Britannic majesty—but that is neither here nor there. A faint smile played at the corners of my lady’s lips. It was enough. She had taken note of my presence.
She was plainly a great lady of the type which England alone can produce, one of those rangy, imperial, dominating creatures in whom seem to be compacted innumerable generations of conquering invaders, Derby-winners, stalwart cricketers and astute statesmen. The prevailing color of her person was red, or, to be more accurate, sandy, the short hair being without any tinge of the pink or henna which reeks of the coiffeurs’ art. Her complexion was of a salmon or apricot shade, made almost golden by the overtone of pale, downy fuzz which so often accompanies it. Crowning the crisply curled locks was a regal tiara of large emeralds into which the blue ostrich feather was stuck at a jaunty angle. Never before had I seen a tiara on bobbed hair and the effect coupled with the red and green color scheme was extremely diverting. One felt at once that here was a woman who would dare anything.
Being black myself the aureate color of her skin struck on my heart like a gong. Her brows and lashes were so pale as to be almost albinesque. Above and below a generous, full-lipped mouth her dominant nose contended for supremacy with an obstinate chin. Tanned cheeks spoke plainly of life in the open as did her strong but well-kept hands upon which shone several important emeralds. But what stirred me most were her arms.
Costume makes little or no impression on me. The general effect of what she wore was hard and steely, but gorgeous. The color was mainly white with a great slash of sky-blue introduced somewhere. I had the feeling of being in the presence of a lady-mayor or an important ambassadress. In any case, her arms were exposed beyond the elbow and to my delight they were generously freckled, not with coarse, country-style, ginger-bread mottlings, but with fine, detached discs no bigger than pin heads and pure gold in color. Over these pale paillettes grew the silky fur of which I have spoken. For some reason freckles always excite me, probably because I can never hope to have any except vicariously.
She was playing for high stakes, using only hundred-franc chips and winning with a consistency that attracted the inevitable cortege about her chair, the jackals who try to follow a winner or steal a system by peering over one’s shoulder.
I could but admire the coolness with which she turned and pushed away the face of an ornamental Russian woman, the Princess Sonia Subikoff, notorious adventuress and parasite, whose covetous features kept thrusting themselves under the player’s elbow. Done by one less sure of herself the action would have provoked a terrific scene. As it was, the outraged Princess, soi-disant, struck savagely at the blonde back of the English woman. The blow resounded as if she had hit a packing-case, producing no more effect than a shrug and a cheerful grin as la Subikoff made off, nursing a lame hand and hissing spiteful comment on the animal anglaise. Coolly, superbly, the Anglo-Saxon continued her play, placing her chips with a nonchalant sweep of her great arms. In every movement was the same underlying hint of powerful bony sub-structure.
“Elle est dure,” said a voice at my side.
“Qui ça?”
“La belle laide, en face.”
I turned with an instinctive hostility toward the speaker, his voice, manner ... everything. To discuss a woman, openly, in a public place.... La belle laide! ... and yet, was she not just that? There is a merciless precision in the Latin tongue.