Jennie opened the door and came to his bedside. She had changed her attire completely. She now wore the costume of a ballerina--a tight pink corsage, very low and sleeveless, with the slightest of pink loops over her shoulders, a short, fluffy pink skirt barely to her knees, pink tights, and pink dancing slippers. Over one of the bright knobs of her hair was a pink rose. She was much more brilliantly rouged than before, and he was conscious of a warm scent of powder and perfume.
Merriam lay staring at her without speaking, subconsciously shocked perhaps, but openly bewildered and fascinated.
She smiled at him and seemed to be inspecting him in return. Her left hand hung at her side, holding something heavy, but she put out her right and touched his hair--with a single little movement ruffled it.
"You look very nice lying there," she said in the most natural tones in the world. "How do I look?"
She stepped back and pirouetted, turning completely around on her toes. The fluffy pink skirts swung out and circled with her in a most entrancing manner. Merriam was quite dazzled. The white gleam of her back as she turned, the slender white arms, held gracefully away from her sides, in spite of that heavy something in one hand, the tight slimness of the waist, the glimpse of pink legs beneath the circling skirt--he had seen the like only on the stage. It was rather overpowering so close at hand.
But in a single rosy moment her revolution was completed. She was facing him again and relaxing down off her toes.
"How do I look?" she repeated, smiling, with the slightest natural augmentation of her artificial flush.
Merriam swallowed. "Stunning!" he ejaculated.
She beamed. "Of course I do," she said.
Then her face seemed to harden. She stepped closer to the bed so that she was almost bending over him.