ed her face to him, a sneer on her lips. But before she could
speak he said, apologetically:

"I know it isn't a subtle compliment. It happens to be a fact. There is
going to be tremendous pressure brought to bear on me for places on the
corps. I tell you this because your best friends will drive you crazy
asking you to use your influence with me. People who decry favoritism
always expect favors. I'd do anything for you. But I can't have any but
perfectly beautiful ones. I simply can't!"

She looked at him with irrepressible interest. Then, remembering her
position, said, coldly, "Will you please leave now and never come back?"

He went on: "It is going to make enemies for you. That will be your
first payment for being famous. You will be Number One of the perfectly
beautiful hundred because God made you what you are and not because you
are my wife--"

"I am not!"

"--to be. You didn't let me finish. Tell your friends you can't. If they
pester you, tell 'em flatly you won't. And for Heaven's sake don't use
the photograph of your pearls any more, nor the Crane portrait. Use the
picture _Vogue_ had last week. Or get some fresh ones and give La Touche
an order to supply 'em to the reporters. They won't cost you a cent that
way, because they print his name. Good-by, Grace."

He held out his hand. She quickly put hers behind her back. His face
thereat lighted up.

"Ah, you love me!" he exclaimed. "It was only a question of time,
Empress. And you will never know how much I love you until you realize
what it costs me to go away from here, unkissing, unkissed, and yet
without regrets! But some day--" He paused, and then, with a fierce
hunger that made his voice thick, "Some day I'll _eat_ you!"

He walked out. She made an instinctive movement toward him, but checked
herself. As he left the room she confronted the mirror and looked at
herself.

It brought the usual mood of kindliness.

She forgave him.

She rang for Frederick. "The Menaud motor, at once!" and went up-stairs
to telephone. If the reporters had to use photographs, she couldn't stop
them.

Ten minutes later she had kindly given La Touche the photographer
eighteen poses.

La Touche thanked her with the perfervid sincerity of a man whose
irreducible minimum is forty-eight dollars a dozen. Then he asked,
anxiously:

"In case the reporters--"

"I suppose they'd get them, anyhow." She spoke cynically.

"Not unless they stole 'em," he denied, dignifi