In one of the long mirrors which reflected her graceful figure from every angle she saw through an opposite door her dressing-room and bath, with its elaborate appointments, more inviting and luxurious than any of which the proudest Roman beauty could have dreamed. She looked about her with a faint, strange smile. What a contrast were these cold and splendid rooms, not yet animated by her personality, to that little apartment with its two or three tiny chambers, high up under the roof, where she had lived and worked!
Then she turned back to her reflection in the mirror. It was extremely becoming to her, all this background of rose and silver. Perdita realized that as she unfastened the white flowers from her hair and let her long veil fall like a cloud about her. With a deft movement she caught it and tossed it on a chair for Olga to fold later. She slipped out of her wedding-gown next and laid it more carelessly still upon a couch. Then she leaned forward, her elbow on the dressing-table, her chin on her hand, and regarded herself steadily, that faint, strange smile still on her lips.
Well, she had fulfilled her destiny, justified Eugene Gresham's prophecy. She heard his words to her, spoken the last time she had seen him, three months before, as plainly as if his voice still rang in her ears.
"Perdita, your destiny is written on your face. It includes marrying a millionaire and having your portrait painted by me."
Fateful words! She had just married the millionaire, but even here, upon the threshold of this new life, she was constrained to halt a moment and cast one backward glance, "just for the old love's sake."
It was the night before Eugene Gresham sailed for Europe to paint the portraits of "Princessin, Contessin and high Altessin." Again she awaited him. Again she heard his step on the stair without, a quick, light step with an odd halt in it.
He was coming, and her heart beat. How it beat as she stood there breathless beside the window!
"Perdita!" Eugene's voice. He was across the room in a flash, both her hands in his. "Here, let me see you in the light." He drew her toward a lamp. "Two years, two years since we have met, and me wasting time painting in the desert places when I might have been with you. Time is not in the Far East. Ah, my cousin!" (the relationship was remote) he sighed. "Why, as I live," with a quick change of tone, "you've got another dimple, and that makes you a new and lovelier Perdita."