“Yes, perhaps.”
She nodded, admitting its truth, and her face clouded before a vision starting out of the shadows. Her arms drew closer about her body, while a shiver ran through it—a premonition perhaps. She repeated:
“Yes, perhaps.”
XVI
Tootles had progressed along the arduous road to masterpieces to the extent that he felt a need of realistic detail. Flick, of course, was but a substitute, the center of the stage, as well as Wimpfheimer & Goldfinch’s perfection dress suit, being now occupied by Belle Shaler, who gave a satisfactory rendering of the new hothouse variety of young man. Sassafras (when he could put the elevator out of commission) represented Primitive Man with impressive ferocity, but there was something lacking in the Sphinx of King O’Leary. O’Leary suggested many things, but he did not suggest the feminine mystery of that historic lady. Tootles felt this, and felt it acutely, when it suddenly occurred to him that, with a little diplomacy, relief might be at hand. Accordingly, one day at high noon, he went tripping down the stone stairway to the floor below and over to the door which was inscribed:
MME. THEODORA PROBASCO
SPIRITUALISTIC SÉANCES
He rapped gently once, and then once more firmly, with an uneasy glance at the darkened glass, that seemed to him of an unearthly obscurity.