Page:The Yellow Book - 04.djvu/205

Rh "Some perhaps," returned Theodora, throwing her glance over them. "But a great many are not new."

It struck me that she would not be a woman very easy to deceive. Some men value a woman in proportion to the ease with which they can impose upon her, but to me it is too much trouble to deceive at all, so that the absence of that amiable quality did not disquiet me. On the contrary, the comprehensive, cynical, and at the same time indulgent smile that came so readily to Theodora's lips charmed me more, because it was the promise of even less trouble than a real or professed obtuseness.

"No," I assented merely.

"Well, then?" asked -Theodora, but without troubling to seek a reply. "How pretty they are and how curious! this one, for instance." And she took up a blue silk zouave, covered with gold embroidery, and worth perhaps about thirty pounds. "This has been a good deal worn. It is a souvenir, I suppose?"

I nodded. With any other woman I was similarly anxious to please I should have denied it, but with her I felt it did not matter.

"Too sacred perhaps, then, for me to put on?" she asked with her hand in the collar, and smiling derisively.

"Oh dear no!" I said, "not at all. Put it on by all means."

"Nothing is sacred to you, eh? I see. Hold it then."

She gave me the zouave and turned for me to put it on her. A glimpse of the back of her white neck, as she bent her head forward, a convulsion of her adorable shoulders as she drew on the jacket, and the zouave was fitted on. Two seconds perhaps, but my self-control wrapped round me had lost one of its skins.

"Now I must find a turban or fez," she said, turning over gently, but without any ceremony, the pile. "Oh, here's one!" She drew out a white fez, also embroidered in gold, and, removing