"Would you show me your eyes? Just materialize them for a moment so I can gaze into them?"
"Do you really like them that much?"
"Please, George...."
"Well ... all right."
And so it was that the congressman, long distracted by a view of Toffee fawning on a vacant chair, suddenly found himself staring across the room at two disembodied eyes which lolled in mid-air, swiveling and rolling about in a delirious attempt to be flashing and roguish. He coughed in a strangled way and glanced around at the judge.
The judge, had the congressman been astute enough to notice, had suddenly gone white about the gills and showed a shifty disinclination to meet his gaze. The truth of the matter was that the judge, similarly baffled by Toffee's seductive attitude toward the chair, had also been subjected to the nasty sight of George's grotesque eye exercises. He, like the congressman, had experienced a feeling of giddiness at the nape of the neck and decided against mentioning the incident. After gazing upon a pair of air-borne eyes which have just crossed themselves in their zeal to convey the charm of the rake, one is generally loath to bring the subject up with anyone save the local psychiatrist. However, had either gentleman had the least inkling of the mad delights yet to come, they might have well bolted the room, shouting the news to the world.
The fact was that Toffee, in her endeavor to hypnotize George, was meeting with extraordinary success. Having gazed into George's eyes with his full cooperation it was only the matter of a moment before the hapless shade was completely mesmerized. The eyes, under Toffee's steady gaze, grew heavy, drooped, closed altogether, then reopened with a slightly dazed appearance. It was not a pleasant sight, but Toffee appeared to find satisfaction in it.
Not so, however, the judge and the congressman. Watching these developments with sidelong anxiety, they were sore put to it to continue with the business at hand.
"Yes, yes," the judge said vaguely, "you were telling me about this blackguard who's been saying all these filthy things about you...?"