Deacon, seated in a great ebony chair, smoked rapidly and nervously—looking about the strangely appointed room with its huge picture of the Madonna, its jade Buddha surmounting a gilded Burmese cabinet, its Persian canopy and Egyptian divan, at the thousand and one costly curiosities which it displayed, at this mingling of East and West, of Christianity and paganism, with a growing wonder.
To one of his blood there was delight, intoxication, in that room; but something of apprehension, too, now grew up within him.
Madame de Medici entered. The garish motor-coat was discarded now, and her supple figure was seen to best advantage in one of those dark silken gowns which she affected, and which had a seeming of the ultra-fashionable because they defied fashion. She held in her hand an orchid, its structure that of an odontoglossum, but of a delicate green colour heavily splashed with scarlet—a weird and unnatural-looking bloom.
Just within the doorway she paused, as Deacon leaped up, and looked at him through the veil of the curved lashes.
“For you,” she said, twirling the blossom between her fingers and gliding toward him with her tigerish step.
He spoke no word, but, face flushed, sought to look into her eyes as she pinned the orchid in the button-hole of his coat. Her hands were flawless in shape and colouring, being beautiful as the sculptured hands preserved in the works of Phidias.
The slight draught occasioned by the opening of the door caused the smoke from the incense-burner to be wafted toward the centre of the room. Like a blue-gray phantom it coiled about the two standing there upon a red and gold Bedouin rug, and the heavy perfume, or the close proximity of this singularly lovely woman, wrought upon the high-strung sensibilities of Deacon to such an extent that he was conscious of a growing faintness.
“Ah! You are not well!” exclaimed Madame with deep concern. “It is the perfume which that foolish Ah Li has lighted. He forgets that we are in England.”
“Not at all,” protested Deacon faintly, and conscious that he was making a fool of himself. “I think I have perhaps been overdoing it rather of late. Forgive me if I sit down.”
He sank on the cushioned divan, his heart beating furiously, while Madame touched the little bell, whereupon one of the servants entered.
She spoke in Chinese, pointing to the incense-burner.
Ah Li bowed and removed the censer. As the door softly reclosed:
“You are better?” she whispered, sweetly solicitous, and, seating herself beside Deacon, she laid her hand lightly upon his arm.
“Quite,” he replied hoarsely; “please do not worry about me. I am wondering what has become of Annesley.”
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