“They have cause to be jealous of you,” said Roy Ainsworth.—“You succeed in everything you touch.”
“Success is easy,” she replied indifferently,—“Resolve upon it, and carry out that resolve—and the thing is done.”
El-Râmi looked at her with new interest.
“Madame, you have a strong will!” he observed.—“But permit me to say that all your sex are not like yourself, beautiful, gifted, and resolute at one and the same time. The majority of women are deplorably unintelligent and uninteresting.”
“That is precisely how I find the majority of men!” declared Irene Vassilius, with that little soft laugh of hers which was so sweet, yet so full of irony.—“You see, we view things from different standpoints. Moreover, the deplorably unintelligent and uninteresting women are the very ones you men elect to marry, and make the mothers of the nation. It is the way of masculine wisdom,—so full of careful forethought and admirable calculation!” She laughed again, and continued—“Lord Melthorpe tells me you are a seer,—an Eastern prophet arisen in these dull modern days—now will you solve me a riddle that I am unable to guess,—myself?—and tell me if you can, who am I and what am I?”
“Madame,” replied El-Râmi bowing profoundly, “I cannot in one moment unravel so complex an enigma.”
She smiled, not ill pleased, and met his dark, fiery, penetrating glance unreservedly,—then, drawing off her long loose glove, she held out her small beautifully-shaped white hand.
“Try me,” she said lightly, “for if there is any truth in ‘brain-waves’ or reflexes of the mind the touch of my fingers ought to send electric meanings through you. I am generally judged as of a frivolous disposition because I am small in stature, slight in build, and have curly hair—all proofs positive, according to the majority, of latent foolishness. Colossal women, however, are always astonishingly stupid, and fat women lethargic—but a mountain of good flesh is always more attractive to man than any amount of intellectual perception. Oh, I am not posing as one of the ‘misunderstood’; not at all—I simply wish you to look well at me first and take in my ‘frivolous’ appearance thoroughly, before being misled by the messages of my hand.”
El-Râmi obeyed her in so far that he fixed his eyes upon her more searchingly than before,—a little knot of fashionable loungers had stopped to listen, and now watched her face with equal curiosity. No rush of embarrassed colour tinged the cool fairness of her cheeks—her expression was one of quiet, half-smiling indifference—her attitude full of perfect self-possession.
“No one who looks at your eyes can call you frivolous Madame,” said El-Râmi at last.—“And no one who observes the lines of your mouth and chin could suspect you of latent foolishness. Your physiognomy must have been judged by the merest surface-observers. As for stature, we are aware that goes for naught,—most of the heroes and heroines of history have been small and slight in build. I will now, if you permit me, take your hand.”