For a moment he stared at it hypnotized; then his eyes shifted wildly to his dresser, which seemed to be covered with somebody else's toilet silver and crystal, and—what was that row of cunning little commercial curls!—that chair heaped with fluffy stuffs, lacy, intimate things, faintly fragrant!
"A dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan."
With a violent shiver he turned his startled eyes toward the parted tapestry gently stirring in the unfelt summer wind.
From where he stood he could see into the great studio beyond. A small, flowered silk slipper lay near the threshold, high of heel, impertinent, fascinating; beyond, on the corner of a table stood a bowl full of peonies, ivory, pink, and salmon-tinted; and their perfume filled the place.
Somebody had rolled up the studio shades. Sunshine turned the great square window to a sheet of dazzling glory, and against it, picked out in delicate silhouette, a magic shadow was moving—a dainty, unreal shape, exquisite as a tinted phantom stealing through a fairy tale of Old Japan.
Suddenly the figure turned its head and saw him, and stood motionless against the flare of light—a young girl, very slim in her shimmering vestments of blossom-sprayed silk.
The next moment he walked straight into the studio.
Neither spoke. She examined him out of wide and prettily shaped eyes; he inspected her with amazed intentness. Everything about her seemed so unreal, so subtly fragrant—the pink peonies like fluffy powder-puffs above each little close-set ear, the rose-tinted silhouette of her, the flushed cheeks, soft bare arms, the silk-sheathed feet shod in tiny straw sandals tied with vermilion cords.
"Who are you?" she asked; and her voice seemed to him as charmingly unreal as the rest of the Japanese fairy tale that held him enthralled.