LITMIR.BIZ

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between sips of coffee. Frequently she smiled. The short powerful hand of the man stroked his beard and he beamed out of his cunning eyes, eyes a trifle too porcine to suggest a keen intellect above them.

      “I am like a gorilla,” he said; “but you are like a sleek tigress. I am stronger, more powerful than you; but I am always in fear of your claws. Especially when you smile like that. What mischief are you plotting now?”

      She drew in a cloud of smoke, held it in her puffed cheeks as she glided round the table and leaned over his shoulders. She let the smoke drift over his head and down his beard. In that moment he was truly Jovian.

      “Would you like me if I were a tame cat?” she purred.

      “I have never seen you in that rôle. Perhaps I might. You told me that you would give up everything but the Paris season.”

      “I have changed my mind.” She ran one hand through his hair and the other she entangled in his beard. “You’d change your mind, too, if you were a woman.”

      “I don’t have to change my mind; you are always doing it for me. But I do not want to go to America next winter.” He drew her down so that he might look into her face. It was something to see.

      “Bah!” She released herself and returned to her chair. “When the season is over I want to go to Capri.”

      “Capri! Too hot.”

      “I want to go.”

      “My dear, a dozen exiles are there, waiting to blow me up.” He spoke Italian well. “You do not wish to see me spattered over the beautiful isle?”

      “Tch! tch! That is merely your usual excuse. You never had anything to do with the police.”

      “No?” He eyed the end of his cigarette gravely. “One does not have to be affiliated with the police. There is class prejudice. We Russians are very fond of Egypt in the winter. Capri seems to be the half-way place. They wait for us, going and coming. Poor fools!”

      “I shall go alone, then.”

      “All right.” In his dull way he had learned that to pull the diva, one must agree with her. In agreeing with her one adroitly dissuaded her. “You go to Capri, and I’ll go to the pavilion on the Neva.”

      She snuffed the cigarette in the coffee-cup and frowned. “Some day you will make me horribly angry.”

      “Beautiful tigress! If a man knew what you wanted, you would not want it. I can’t hop about with the agility of those dancers at the Théâtre du Palais Royale. The best I can do is to imitate the bear. What is wrong?”

      “They keep giving her the premier parts. She has no more fire in her than a dead grate. The English-speaking singers, they are having everything their own way. And none of them can act.”

      “My dear Flora, this Eleonora is an actress, first of all. That she can sing is a matter of good fortune, no more. Be reasonable. The consensus of critical opinion is generally infallible; and all over the continent they agree that she can act. Come, come; what do you care? She will never approach your Carmen…”

      “You praise her to me?” tempest in her glowing eyes.

      “I do not praise her. I am quoting facts. If you throw that cup, my tigress…”

      “Well?” dangerously.

      “It will spoil the set. Listen. Some one is at the speaking-tube.”

      The singer crossed the room impatiently. Ordinarily she would have continued the dispute, whether the bell rang or not. But she was getting the worst of the argument and the bell was a timely diversion. The duke followed her leisurely to the wall.

      “What is it?” asked Flora in French.

      The voice below answered with a query in English. “Is this the Signorina Desimone?”

      “It is the duchess.”

      “The duchess?”

      “Yes.”

      “The devil!”

      She turned and stared at the duke, who shrugged. “No, no,” she said; “the duchess, not the devil.”

      “Pardon me; I was astonished. But on the stage you are still Flora Desimone?”

      “Yes. And now that my identity is established, who are you and what do you want at this time of night?”

      The duke touched her arm to convey that this was not the moment in which to betray her temper.

      “I am Edward Courtlandt.”

      “The devil!” mimicked the diva.

      She and the duke heard a chuckle.

      “I beg your pardon again, Madame.”

      “Well, what is it you wish?” amiably.

      The duke looked at her perplexedly. It seemed to him that she was always leaving him in the middle of things. Preparing himself for rough roads, he would suddenly find the going smooth. He was never swift enough mentally to follow these flying transitions from enmity to amity. In the present instance, how was he to know that his tigress had found in the man below something to play with?

      “You once did me an ill turn,” came up the tube. “I desire that you make some reparation.”

      “Sainted Mother! but it has taken you a long time to find out that I have injured you,” she mocked.

      There was no reply to this; so she was determined to stir the fire a little.

      “And I advise you to be careful what you say; the duke is a very jealous man.”

      That gentleman fingered his beard thoughtfully.

      “I do not care a hang if he is.”

      The duke coughed loudly close to the tube.

      Silence.

      “The least you can do, Madame, is to give me her address.”

      “Her address!” repeated the duke relievedly. He had had certain grave doubts, but these now took wing. Old flames were not in the habit of asking, nay, demanding, other women’s addresses.

      “I am speaking to Madame, your Highness,” came sharply.

      “We do not speak off the stage,” said the singer, pushing the duke aside.

      “I should like to make that young man’s acquaintance,” whispered the duke.

      She warned him to be silent.

      Came the voice again: “Will you give me her address, please? Your messenger gave me your address, inferring that you wished to see me.”

      “I?” There was no impeaching her astonishment.

      “Yes, Madame.”

      “My dear Mr. Courtlandt, you are the last man in all the wide world I wish to see. And I do not quite like the way you are making your request. His highness does not either.”

      “Send him down!”

      “That is true.”

      “What is?”

      “I remember. You are very strong and much given to fighting.”

      The duke opened and shut his hands, pleasurably. Here was something he could understand. He was a fighting man himself. Where was this going to end, and what was it all about?

      “Do you not think, Madame, that you owe me something?”

      “No. What I owe I pay. Think, Mr. Courtlandt; think well.”

      “I do not understand,” impatiently.

      “Ebbene, I owe you nothing. Once I heard you say – ‘I do not like to see you with the Calabrian; she is – Well, you know.’ I stood behind you at another time when you said that I was a fool.”

      “Madame, I do not forget that, that is pure invention. You are mistaken.”

      “No. You were. I am no fool.”

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