When I meet the little girl
Behind the tea-pot.’”
“Me-not. Tea-pot,” she repeated with a frown of concentration in which lurked a smile. “How ver-y droll your classics are.”
His rather severe mouth lifted with a whimsical twist. “After all, it resolves itself into this—a man fears, not what a woman is, but what she seems to be.”
Parsinova met the steady gaze with a quick startled look and bit her lip to keep it from quivering. But his next words answered the unspoken question that for a second shook her perfect poise.
“I wonder—” he said slowly, “I wonder if you’re as simple as you seem complex.”
She did not reply at once, did not lift her eyes. They wandered out through the wide window to the sheen of river and hazy Palisades in the distance. Randolph had driven her out to Longue Vue at the hour when the sun slides lazily into soft spring shadows.
“Why do you think me—as you say—com-plex?” She lifted her eyes and the sun slanted across them. Perhaps that was why he failed to give her a direct answer.
“Odd,” he observed, “I didn’t guess you had gray eyes. They look so dark from the stage. They’re wonderful eyes at close inspection, by the way.”
“Are they, too,—com-plex?”