Sylvia lifted her delicate eyebrows and gave him a slow, quiet stare, four-fifths scorn and one-fifth challenge.
“Gad!” he exclaimed. “You are interesting for a fact! When you look like that!”
“Not otherwise?” she inquired, now wholly scornful.
“Oh, you’re not the most beautiful woman I ever saw! Nor the cleverest!”
“Do not challenge me like that.”
“Why not?” he laughed.
“You might regret it.”
“It would be a good adventure—I’d be willing to pay the price to see the game. I admire a woman who knows her business.”
So the banter continued; the man displaying his cleverness and Sylvia casting upon him glances of mockery, of contempt, half veiling curiosity and interest. He, of course, being secretly convinced of his own irresistibility, was noting these glances and speculating about them, thrilled by them without realizing it, persuading himself that the girl was really coming to admire him. This was a kind of encounter which had occurred, not once, but a hundred times in Sylvia’s career, and usually it meant nothing in particular to her. But now it brought a reckless joy, because of the shock it was giving to that other man—the terrible man who sat across the way, his eyes boring into her very soul!