been trying to get a maid up here for the past
half-hour.... I think there's only three or four between the
shoulder-blades--won't you do them for me?"

She backed up to him bewitchingly.... Mrs. Wordling was in the
twenty-nine period. If the thing can be imagined, she gave the
impression of being both voluptuous and athletic. There was a rose-dusk
tone under her healthy skin, where the neck went singing down to the
shoulder, singing of warm blood and plenteous. Hers was the mid-height
of woman, so that Bedient was amusedly conscious of the length of his
hands, as he stood off for a second surveying the work to do.

"What's the trouble; can't you?"

There was a purring tremble in her tone that stirred the wanderer, only
it was the past entirely that moved within him. The moment had little
more rousing for him, than if he were asked to fasten a child's
romper.... Yet he did not miss that here was one of the eternal types
of man's pursuit--as natural a man's woman as ever animated a roomful
of photographs--a woman who could love much, and, as Heine added,
_many_.

"I'll just throw a shawl around, if you can't," she urged, nudging her
shoulder.

"Far too warm for shawls," he laughed. "I was only getting it straight
in my mind before beginning. You know it's tricksome for one accustomed
mainly to men's affairs.... There's one--I won't pinch--and the
second--anytime you can't find a maid, Mrs. Wordling--I'm in the Club a
good deal--there they are, if they don't fly open----" and his hands
fell with a pat on each of her shoulders.

Facing him, Mrs. Wordling encountered a perfectly unembarrassed young
man, and a calm depth of eye that seemed to have come and gone from her
world, and taken away nothing to remember that was wildly exciting....
At least three women of her acquaintance were raving about Andrew
Bedient, two artists with a madness for sub-surface matters having to
do with men. Mrs. Wordling believed herself a more finished artist in
these affairs. She wanted to prove this, while Bedient was the dominant
man-interest of the Club.

And now he surprised her. He was different from the man she had
pictured. Equally well, she could have located him--had he kissed her,
or appeared confused with embarrassment. Most men of her acquaintance
would have kissed her; others would have proved clumsy and abashed, but
none could have passed through the test she offered with both denial
and calm.... She wanted the interest o