But not only did she not press my hand in return, as she ought to have done; on the contrary, she irritably drew it back and turned aside her head.
Suddenly a light flashed through my brain, a light kindled by my immeasurable self-conceit. "Why go on praising the distant husband," said I to myself, "when you yourself are present? Do you think she invited you to dinner to sing the praises of Wenceslaus Kvatopil?"
I drew my chair nearer to the sofa on which Bessy was sitting, and airily passed my hand through my frizzled locks.
Bessy observed the movement, and quickly turned her face towards me. A mocking smile suddenly lighted up her face, a smile from which a man can read a whole chapter in a moment. That is something like stenography.
"Ha, ha, sir! then we have come thither with that thought, have we? We have had our hair frizzled, eh? We have decked ourselves out to be irresistible, I know?"
A thousand mocking fish-tailed nixies were wriggling about in those sea-like eyes.
It was a murderous sort of smile.
I was conscious of having been taken down pretty considerably. Here was I (quite contrary to my usual custom) tricked and furbished up like a "petit maître," while she, the lady, received me in her simplest barracan house-dress, without any finery, and with a smile she discharged at me the saying of the great poet:
"O Vanity! thy name is woman!"
But why, then, had she sent for me?