Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/27

Rh his lips were thick, so the madura-brown was well spread.

"Then you remember me?" I cooed, with a flutter of self-satisfied hope.

"Sure," was his easy rejoinder. He leaned back in his chair and looked me over. I knew then, in one flash, why I'd always hated the thought of stage work. It was that look, the look that came from all of them, the look that I knew would forever curdle my marrow. It was the look that left women merely flesh, live stock to be duly appraised by the buyer. And it made me feel that I had hives and nettle-rash and scarletina all at once.

"You're too much of a queen to fade out of this busy bean of mine in one short summer," he calmly announced.

He was bald and his eyes protruded. Yet in the strong side-light from the office window, I noticed, those eyes were the softest of seal-brown. I hated to meet their glance, however, for they made me think of a sleepy diamond-back rattle-snake curled up behind zoo glass. I stared up at the portrait of Rose Elton in the old-fashioned fleshlings of the old-fashioned merry-merry. I stared at her billowy lines and remembered that she had at some time "fleshed up" to their standard. I stared at a photo-