SA-N’SA
June sunshine poured through the window of his bedroom in the Ritz; and Cleves had just finished dressing when he heard his wife’s voice in the adjoining sitting-room.
He had not supposed that Tressa was awake. He hastened to tie his tie and pull on a smoking jacket, listening all the while to his wife’s modulated but gay young voice.
Then he opened the sitting-room door and went in. And found his wife entirely alone.
She looked up at him, her lips still parted as though checked in what she had been saying, the smile still visible in her blue eyes.
“Who on earth are you talking to?” he asked, his bewildered glance sweeping the sunny room again.
She did not reply; her smile faded as a spot of sunlight wanes, veiled by a cloud—yet a glimmer of it remained in her gaze as he came over to her.
“I thought they’d brought our breakfast,” he said, “—hearing your voice.... Did you sleep well?”
“Yes, Victor.”
He seated himself, and his perplexed scrutiny included her frail morning robe of China silk, her lovely bare arms, and her splendid hair twisted up and pegged down with a jade dagger. Around her bare throat and shoulders, too, was a magnificent necklace of imperial jade which he had never before seen; and on one slim, white finger a superb jade ring.