"It's the least I could do in such a splendid cause."
"Well, dear Mrs. Levitt, we're delighted to have you with us.
Delighted."
There was a pause. He was looking down at her from the height of his six feet. The faint, sweet scent of orris root rose up from her warm skin. She was very attractive, dressed in a low-necked gown of that dull, satiny stuff women were wearing now. A thin band of white net was stretched across the top of her breasts; through it he could see the shadowy, arrow-headed groove between; her pendant—pearl bistre and paste—pointed, pointed down to it.
He was wrong about Elise and jewellery. That was a throat for pearls and for diamonds. Emeralds. She would be all black and white and sparkling green. A necklace, he thought, wouldn't hang on her; it would be laid out, exposed on that white breast as on a cushion. You could never tell what a woman was really like till you'd seen her in a low-necked gown. It made Mrs. Levitt ten times more alluring. He smiled at her, a tender, brooding, rather fatuous smile.
Mrs. Levitt saw that her moment had come. It would be now or never. She must risk it.
"I wish," she said, "you'd introduce me to your wife."
It was a shock, a horrid blow. It showed plainly that Elise had interests beyond him, that she was not, like him, all for the secret, solitary adventure.
Yet perhaps—perhaps—she had planned it; she thought it would be safer for them, more discreet.
She looked up at him with the old, irrefutable smile.
"Will you?" she pleaded.