ws.
Especially when you smile like that. What mischief are you plotting now?"

She drew in a cloud of smoke, held it in her puffed cheeks as she glided
round the table and leaned over his shoulders. She let the smoke drift
over his head and down his beard. In that moment he was truly Jovian.

"Would you like me if I were a tame cat?" she purred.

"I have never seen you in that role. Perhaps I might. You told me that you
would give up everything but the Paris season."

"I have changed my mind." She ran one hand through his hair and the other
she entangled in his beard. "You'd change your mind, too, if you were a
woman."

"I don't have to change my mind; you are always doing it for me. But I do
not want to go to America next winter." He drew her down so that he might
look into her face. It was something to see.

"Bah!" She released herself and returned to her chair. "When the season is
over I want to go to Capri."

"Capri! Too hot."

"I want to go."

"My dear, a dozen exiles are there, waiting to blow me up." He spoke
Italian well. "You do not wish to see me spattered over the beautiful
isle?"

"Tch! tch! That is merely your usual excuse. You never had anything to do
with the police."

"No?" He eyed the end of his cigarette gravely. "One does not have to be
affiliated with the police. There is class prejudice. We Russians are very
fond of Egypt in the winter. Capri seems to be the half-way place. They
wait for us, going and coming. Poor fools!"

"I shall go alone, then."

"All right." In his dull way he had learned that to pull the diva, one
must agree with her. In agreeing with her one adroitly dissuaded her. "You
go to Capri, and I'll go to the pavilion on the Neva."

She snuffed the cigarette in the coffee-cup and frowned. "Some day you
will make me horribly angry."

"Beautiful tigress! If a man knew what you wanted, you would not want it.
I can't hop about with the agility of those dancers at the Theatre du
Palais Royale. The best I can do is to imitate the bear. What is wrong?"

"They keep giving her the premier parts. She has no more fire in her than
a dead grate. The English-speaking singers, they are having everything
their own way. And none of them can act."

"My dear Flora, this Eleonora is an actress, first of all. That she can
sing is a matter of good fortune, no more. Be reasonable. The consensus of
critical opinion is generally infallible; and all over the continent they
agree that she