Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/197

Rh drew forward for her my own favourite chair, and Theodora sank into it, and her tiny, exquisitely-formed feet sought my fender-rail. At a murmured invitation from me, she unfastened and laid aside her jacket. Beneath, she revealed some purplish, silk-like material, that seemed shot with different colours as the firelight fell upon it. It was strained tight and smooth upon her, and the swell of a low bosom was distinctly defined below it. There was no excessive development, quite the contrary, but in the very slightness there was an indescribably sensuous curve, and a depression, rising and falling, that seemed as if it might be the very home itself of passion. It was a breast with little suggestion of the duties or powers of Nature, but with infinite seduction for a lover.

"What a marvellous collection you have here," she said throw ing her glance round the room. "What made you bring home all these things?"

"The majority were gifts to me—presents made by the different natives whom I visited or came into connection with in various ways. A native is never happy, if he likes you at all, until he has made you some valuable present."

"You must be very popular with them indeed," returned Theodora, glancing from a brilliant Persian carpet, suspended on the wall, to a gold and ivory model of a temple, on the console by her side.

"Well, when one stays with a fellow as his guest, as I have done with some of these small rajahs and people, of course one tries to make oneself amiable." "The fact is, Miss Dudley," interrupted Digby, "Ray admires these fellows, and that is why they like him. Just look at this sketch-book of his what trouble he has taken to make portraits of them."