"Yes," he assented briefly.
"She must be very beautiful."
"I think she is," he answered, with a sudden relaxing of his strained features.
"Not a bit like you."
He feigned a rueful discontent.
"Not a bit. I always tell her that she was jealous, and wouldn't spare me so much as one good feature."
"Whereat, I hope, she boxes your ears for your ingratitude, you mortal with the perfect body!" She replaced the picture regretfully. "And this——"
She broke off. It became very still in the low-roofed room. Even the cheetah had ceased its infant growlings as though it felt the tension in the quiet about him. Tristram threw back his head, his chin thrust out, and did not speak. Suddenly she turned to him. Her lips were parted, in a wide, eager smile that was like a child's. Impulsively, ingenuously, she held out her ungloved hand to him, palm downwards.
"Is that your confession, Tristram Tristram!"
For one instant he wavered, the next he was at her side, had taken her hand and bowed over it and kissed it. Then he stood back, defiant, trembling, like a man who has committed a world-staggering enormity. But to her, it seemed, nothing had happened, nothing that she had not willed and desired. Still smiling, she turned away from him and, seating herself in the high-backed chair, placed the photograph where she could see it best. Then she became intent, absorbed. The brief incident and the man who watched her waveringly seemed to have been swallowed up in something greater, some passionate feeling. Without a word he left her and she did not hear him go. It was only when he returned presently and placed a cup and saucer before her that she looked up, colouring faintly.