“Gestures? Contortions, you mean! The life you are leading is about as restful, not to say dignified, as that of a trapeze performer or an animal trainer. You will break down if you don’t look out. And it doesn’t suit you, carissima, this perpetual chasing. You were intended to be a grande dame, a——”
“A Florentine Marchesa?” broke in Anne maliciously. “I believe you would like to see me, old and settled with a flock of bambini clustered about my gouty knees, and a mustache bristling above my dewy lips!”
Not at all crestfallen, the Marchese gazed merrily into her stormy eyes.
“How we hate to be tied up!” he laughed. “And how we loathe the idea of being respectable and dowagerly. The bambini, of course, I couldn’t answer for, but as to the mustache, there is always Zip!”
“Wretch!” she laughed.
The firelight played upon her pale features, as she returned his gaze. A tea-gown of claret-colored velvet clung to her relaxed body in suave folds, emphasizing the gardenia pallor of throat and arms, the russet splendor of her hair. He gave vent to his adoration.
“If you were not so slim, you’d make a gorgeous Titian as you lie there, Anne. There’s something Sixteenth Century and magnificent about you. A Bianca Cappello smiling over the rim of a poisoned goblet. There’s nothing modern about you, except your mode of life, which is as lurid and reposeful as a cubist daub. Let’s see, what was to-day’s hectic program?”
Anne laughed and reached for a crumpet. “Dressmaker’s this morning and hats. Lunch with Gerald and a matinée. Inquisitorial tea at present. Later, dinner at the Ritz with you and Ellen and that new Hindoo of hers, the theater again and the new dance club. That’s all. A nice little merry-go-round, warranted to keep on whirling forever, to the same tenpenny tune. With no disconcerting progress whatsoever. What more can you ask of life?” she added with a cynical little laugh.
His compassionate eyes embarrassed her, but she shrugged disdainfully.
“I admit I would have liked to do nothing to-night but sit before the fire and read one of my memoirs. But what can I do? The tickets were bought, the party arranged, so I suppose I must sip the bitter dregs of anti-climax philosophically.”