To be rid of his insistence she touched her lips to her glass, set it back on the tray, and wiped her lips when he wasn’t looking.
Smull’s ruddy visage was ruddier after the third cocktail. The grave servant opened two folding glass doors; Smull gave his arm to Eris.
Everything in the dining-room was suffused in a glow merciful to age and exquisitely transfiguring mortal youth into angelic immortality.
The sheer beauty of the flowers, of the silver and glass; the white walls, the antique splendour of mirror and painting entranced the girl.
Faultlessly chosen, perfectly served, the dinner progressed gaily, and without the visible embarrassment of Eris who, however, was conscious of a vague uneasiness, and who wondered why Frank Donnell did not arrive.
There was champagne. She touched the glass with her lips, but all his gay cajolery and persuasion could not induce her to do more.
She glanced at his face from time to time, noticing the deepening colour with curiosity but without uneasiness; always politely returning the fixed smile that never left those two little blackish brown eyes set a trifle too close together.
Politely, too, she awaited Smull’s introduction of the subject matter to be discussed—the reason, in fact, and the excuse for her presence at this man’s table.
But Smull talked of other matters,—trivial matters,—such as her personal beauty; the personal success she might make over sentimental men if she chose; the certain surprise and jealousy of other women—but what women, and of what sort he did not specify or make very clear.
“You ought to get on,” he said, almost grinning.