Page:Glimpses of the Moon (Wharton 1922).djvu/228

218 than which nothing was less likely to deceive or to flatter him.

His twinkling eyes played curiously over her face, and she went on, meeting them with a smile: "But don't imagine, all the same, that if I should decide  it would be altogether for your beaux yeux. "

He laughed, she thought, rather drily. "No," he said, "I don't suppose that's ever likely to happen to me again."

"Oh, Streff—" she faltered with compunction. It was odd—once upon a time she had known exactly what to say to the man of the moment, whoever he was, and whatever kind of talk he required; she had even, in the difficult days before her marriage, reeled off glibly enough the sort of lime-light sentimentality that plunged poor Fred Gillow into such speechless beatitude. But since then she had spoken the language of real love, looked with its eyes, embraced with its hands; and now the other trumpery art had failed her, and she was conscious of bungling and groping like a beginner under Strefford's ironic scrutiny.

They had reached their obscure destination and he opened the door and glanced in.

"It's jammed—not a table. And stifling! Where shall we go? Perhaps they could give us a room to ourselves—" he suggested.

She assented, and they were led up a cork-screw staircase to a squat-ceilinged closet lit by the arched top of a high window, the lower panes of