Still with the same air of sheepish pride, Graham said: "Peter, this is Miss Ita Strabosck. My brother, Ita. And this is Nicholas Kenyon, who's a great friend of mine. They've just come over from England, and so of course I've brought them to see you."
The little girl held out a very shy hand, and said: "I am so glad. Eet ees very good of you to come."
In a curiously plain tight frock of some soft black material, cut square across her tiny breasts, and leaving her arms bare almost to the shoulders, she stood, with one knee bent, looking from one man to the other with a sort of wistful eagerness to be treated kindly. She held a tiny black Teddy bear with red eyes against her cheek, like a child.
Peter, for a reason which he was unable to explain to himself, felt a wave of sympathy go over him. He not only accepted the girl on her face value, but somehow or other believed her to be younger and more romantic than she looked. She seemed to him to have stepped out of the pages of some Arabian book--to be a little exotic whom Graham must have discovered far away from her native hot-house. He liked the way in which her thick hair was arranged round her face, and he would have sworn that she was without guile.
Not so Kenyon. "Great Scott!" he said to himself. "Here's a little devil for you. Our young friend Graham has had his leg pulled. I've seen mosquitoes before, but the poison of this one will take all the ingenuity of an expert to counteract."
He sat down and watched the girl, who threw one quick antagonistic glance at him and attached herself to Peter, to whom she talked in monosyllables. She might only very recently have left a Convent School, except that her dog-like worship of Graham seemed to prove that she owed him a deep debt of gratitude for some great service.
Graham watched her, too, and his expression showed Kenyon that even if he didn't love her he believed in her and was proud of himself.
By a sort of mutual consent the three men left the apartment in Twenty-eighth Street early. They did not desire to finish the evening at any cabaret or club. They called the first passing taxicab and drove home. By mutual consent also they never once referred to Ita Strabosck, but discussed everything else under the sun. Kenyon had never been so useful. With consummate tact--but all the while with the picture in his mind of the cunning little actress whom they had just left--he led the conversation from dancing to baseball and from country clubs to women's clothes. Whenever the cab passed a strong light Graham made a quick, examining glance at Peter's face. He knew old Peter as well as Peter knew his piano, and he was quite well aware of the fact that although his brother laughed a good deal at Kenyon's quaint turn of phrase he was upset at what he had seen.