"Never any more sure?" His voice deep and rich as a low-toned bell.
Her black eyelashes lay long on her cheek, where the crimson, the hue of a jacqueminot rose petal, was spreading. "There are moments," she admitted, "times when I am with you that I believe that the magic word has been spoken and that my heart has blossomed in purple and red, that I truly love you, but," she shook her head sighingly, "the moment I am away from you, I know that that is not so; that you haven't said the magic word yet, 'Gene."
"But I know it, that magic word," he whispered, "and I shall awake you, just as the Prince did the Sleeping Beauty. Not with a word at all, dear, but with a kiss." He bent forward, but she had slipped away from him, and before he knew it had put almost the length of the room between them.
"You—you must not talk so to me now, 'Gene," the words were barely breathed, "and," with a desperate clutch at a safe topic, "my amulet. I must have it by to-morrow morning."
There was a flash like fire in Gresham's eyes. A quick scowling change darkened his whole face. He picked up the five or six beautifully rolled cigarettes which yet remained of his neat heap and tossed them out of the window.
"I see it," he cried harshly. "You probably have Hepworth's box of amulets in your keeping. You wish to return it to him, and show him when you do so that your old charm is safe in its place. Oh, I can see the whole scene. He will courteously hand it to you and say, 'Your property, I believe, my dear Perdita.' I can hear his frigid, formal utterance. And you will accept it with that grand, ancestral manner of yours, murmuring, 'Thank you, yes, I regret that I can not ask you to accept it as a small contribution to your collection, but that being out of the question on account of certain traditions which adhere to it, I feel that I must continue to hold it in my possession.' Why not be honest, Dita, and tell him that you have given it to me?"
"Eugene, you are impossible. You go entirely too far." There was no mistaking the displeasure in her voice, and his immediate recognition that it was cold, not hot anger, brought him to himself at once.
"Flower of magnolia!" his voice fell to all those exquisite and heart-touching modulations of which he was master. "I was only teasing. Forgive me. You shall have your bit of glass early to-morrow morning. And until I see you again I shall dream only of the wonderful, beautiful years we shall have together. We shall wander about the world, here, there and everywhere, and I shall paint the glory and color of the universe and you, always you, Perdita, the focus, the center, the heart of all beauty."