“If—if he has this power over me, if he can rouse the woman in me,” she reasoned, “he must be the right man, the man I should marry.” It was the simple, true mating of Nature. Surely, surely all would be well?
“You do—you do love me very much, don’t you? I am more to you than your work?”
Her lips had intoxicated him so that he would have told her any lie so that she did not elude him. But he really thought he was speaking the truth, that there was something more than mere sex attraction between them.
“Yes, yes,” he cried fiercely, with the conquering note of the male; “can’t you feel?—don’t you know?—kiss me, kiss me——”
It was several minutes before they went back to the pink abominations and the more sober discussion of their wedding.
Yes, Mrs. Currey was “at home,” the butler admitted, opening the doors hospitably.
By the hats and overcoats lying about the spacious hall of their flat in Albert Hall Mansions, Carey Image knew he was not the only man who had hastened to congratulate Claudia on her husband’s latest honour. He had seen the announcement in the papers that morning. Gilbert Currey had been made a K.C. Image immediately sent a wire to his chambers, and now in person was giving himself the pleasure of calling on his “god-daughter by marriage,” as he called her.
The honour was no surprise to anyone; for the last year or more rumour had marked him out for this distinction. There had even been vague whispers of coming glory in the church at his wedding, eighteen months before. But now Gilbert had stepped into the vacancy left by the death of Howard Barnes, that blunt and sarcastic personality who, under a forbidding exterior, had hidden the heart of a child.
Image had seen very little of the pair since their marriage, for he who has once roamed in the Orient never settles down for long in the dull, tidy lands of the West, and though Cary Image had fully intended to stop in England, he had broken his resolve a few weeks after the ceremony. Japan with her slender golden fingers had beckoned him and he had gone back to the land of almond blossom and universal courtesy.
The room overlooking the Park which he entered, unusually large and lofty for a London flat, seemed crowded to his near-sighted eyes. There was an animated chatter of voices, for Claudia had already gathered around her an amusing and socially attractive set, who talked well and easily, and required but little “managing.” Image’s bright eyes peered out through his eyeglasses in search of his hostess.