"Mrs. Cresswell Hepworth!" Both indifference and sleepiness were things of the past. Miss Fleming sat up in bed with a spring. "She's in the parlor, isn't she? Here, Martha Mary, hustle about. Get me out my gold-colored kimono with the silver wistaria on it, and some yellow stockings and slippers. Tell her I regret having to keep her waiting, late at rehearsal last night. You know the proper thing. Now, go ahead and do your prettiest and then dance back here and help me get into things."
"Certainly no time wasted," reflected the actress standing before her mirror, winding her long ash blonde hair round and round her head. "I dare say it's a case of 'Gur-rl, what have you done with me husband?' There is only one reply to that. I shall draw myself up haughtily and say, 'Pardon, Madame, it was you who first carelessly mislaid him, not I.' Where the deuce are my hair-pins? She'd never come to my apartments with a cat-o'-nine-tails under her golf cape, or a bottle of acid in her shopping bag. Sure-ly not. They always choose the foyer of the theater for such stunts. Oh, Martha Mary," as that person whom Jim Fleming had once designated as a "vinegar-faced-Sue" returned to the bedchamber. "I can find nothing. Everything has crawled under the bed or the bureau. How is the lady dressed for the part? Handsome, dark garments, rich, dark furs, black veil over face, handkerchief handy?"
"The lady is wearing rose-colored cloth and chinchilla," replied Martha Mary literally.
"Rose color and chinchilla. That is a note out, positively frivolous. Oh, dear me! I am only half put together. You get more worthless every day, Martha Mary. Put on all my moonstone rings, for luck. They may save my life."
When Fuschia entered her temporary drawing-room, Perdita Hepworth was standing with her back to her, gazing from the window out upon the bleak wind-swept streets. March was departing with lion-like roars and buffets and striving bravely but vainly to obscure his ugly countenance in clouds of dust. Hearing a slight sound, she turned and saw advancing down the pleasantly warmed, flower-scented room, a young woman whom she instantly likened to a pale but radiant ray of spring sunshine.
This sunshine, yellow kimono, pale yellow hair, a cheek like the heart of a tea-rose, gold-colored silk stockings and slippers, paused between a jar of white lilacs and a basket of hyacinths. The lion-like roars without seemed suddenly all hollow pretense. Spring had come to New York and involuntarily Perdita smiled in greeting.
"Miss Fleming, please forgive this unseemly early call; but you see it is important, this matter I wish to see you about." Perdita thus opened the conversation.
"She can chew up the scenery about me husband all she wishes," said Fuschia to herself, "if she just lets me look at her. Her pictures give no idea of her. She's red roses and music and emotion. She's poetry and romance. My Lord!"
In spite of Perdita's brave attempt, conversation languished. She appeared to be weighing some matter which lay on her mind. At last she looked up with a slightly ironical smile. "You will think I have come on some affair of state, Miss Fleming, the way I am hesitating—"
Fuschia here made a violent mental protest. "Now don't you begin by telling me that I broke up your home, because I didn't. You broke it yourself."