oor swung wide. He stared with
eyes amazed and bewitched. There is no more describing the
effects of a harmonious combination of exquisite dress and
exquisite woman than there is reproducing in words the magic
and the thrill of sunrise or sunset, of moonlight's fanciful
amorous play, or of starry sky. As the girl stood there, her
eyes starlike with excitement, her lips crimson and sensuous
against the clear old-ivory pallor of her small face in its
frame of glorious dark hair, it seemed to him that her soul,
more beautiful counterpart of herself, had come from its
dwelling place within and was hovering about her body like an
aureole. Round her lovely throat was the string of emeralds.
Her shoulders were bare and also her bosom, over nearly half
its soft, girlish swell. And draped in light and clinging
grace about her slender, sensuous form was the most wonderful
garment he had ever seen. The great French designers of
dresses and hats and materials have a genius for taking an
idea--a pure poetical abstraction--and materializing it,
making it visible and tangible without destroying its
spirituality. This dress of Susan's did not suggest matter
any more than the bar of music suggests the rosined string
that has given birth to it. She was carrying the train and a
pair of long gloves in one hand. The skirt, thus drawn back,
revealed her slim, narrow foot, a slender slipper of pale
green satin, a charming instep with a rosiness shimmering
through the gossamer web of pale green silk, the outline of a
long, slender leg whose perfection was guaranteed by the
beauty of her bare arm.

His expression changed slowly from bedazzlement to the nearest
approach to the old slumbrous, smiling wickedness she had seen
since they started. And her sensitive instinct understood; it
was the menace of an insane jealousy, sprung from fear--fear of
losing her. The look vanished, and once again he was Freddie
Palmer the delighted, the generous and almost romantically
considerate, because everything was going as he wished.

"No wonder I went crazy about you," he said.

"Then you're not disappointed?"

He came to her, unclasped the emeralds, stood off and viewed
her again. "No--you mustn't wear them," said he.

"Oh!" she cried, protesting. "They're the best of all."

"Not tonight," said he. "They look cheap. They spoil the
effect of your neck and shoulders. Another time, when you're
not quite so wonderful, but not tonight."