Deflecting from the path into a carriage driveway, he came through a woody hollow to the rear of The Brakes. The grounds were s.p.a.cious, rolling toward the road beyond in a falling sweep of well-kept lawn. He skirted the green till he came to a "raveled walk" that zig-zagged up through the gra.s.s, leaving to the left the rough fern-clad bluff that gave the place its name.

The man who let him in had apparently received his instructions, for he led Farnum to a rather small room in the rear of the big house. Its single occupant was reclining luxuriantly among a number of pillows on a lounge. From her lips a tiny spiral of smoke rose like incense to the ceiling. James was conscious of a little ripple of surprise as he looked down upon the copper crown of splendid hair above which rested the thin nimbus of smoke. He had expected a less intimate reception.

But the astonishment had been sponged from his face before Valencia Van Tyle rose and came forward, cigarette in hand.

"You did find time."

"Was it likely I wouldn't?"

"How should I know?" her little shrug seemed to say with an indifference that bordered on insolence.

James was piqued. After all then she had not opened to him the door to her friendship. She was merely amusing herself with him as a provincial _pis aller._

Perhaps she saw his disappointment, for she added with a touch of warmth: "I'm glad you came. Truth is, I'm bored to death of myself."

"Then I ought to be welcome, for if I don't exorcise the devils of ennui you can now blame me."

"I shall. Try that big chair, and one of these Egyptians."

He helped himself to a cigarette and lit up as casually as if he had been in the habit of smoking in the lounging rooms of the ladies he knew. She watched him sink lazily into the chair and let his glance go wandering over the room. In his face she read the indolent sense of pleasure he found in sharing so intimately this sanctum of her more personal life.

The room was a bit barbaric in its warmth of color, as barbaric as was the young woman herself in spite of her super-civilization. The walls, done in an old rose, were gilded and festooned to meet a ceiling almost Venetian in its scheme of decoration. Pink predominated in the brocaded tapestries and in the rugs, and the furniture was a luxurious modern compromise with the Louis Quinze. There were flowers in profusion--his gaze fell upon the American Beauties he had sent an hour or two ago--and a disorder of popular magazines and French novels. Farnum did not need to be told that the room was as much an exotic as its mistress.

"You think?" her amused voice demanded when his eyes came back to her.

"that the room seems made especially for you."

She volunteered information. "My uncle gave me a free hand to arrange and decorate it."

As he looked at her, smoking daintily in the fling of the fire glow, every inch the pampered heiress of the ages, his blood quickened to an appreciation of the sensuous charm of s.e.x she breathed forth so indifferently. The clinging crepe-de-chine--except in public she did not pretend even to a conventional mourning for the scamp whose name she bore lent accent to her soft, rounded curves, and the slow, regular rise and fall of her breathing beneath the filmy lace promised a perfect fullness of bust and throat. He was keenly responsive to the physical allure of s.e.x, and Valencia Van Tyle was endowed with more than her share of magnetic aura.

"You have expressed yourself. It's like you," he said with finality.

Her tawny eyes met his confident appraisal ironically. "Indeed! You know then what I am like?"

"One uses his eyes, and such brains as heaven has granted him," he ventured lightly.

"And what am I like?" she asked indolently.

"I'm hoping to know that better soon--I merely guess now."

"They say all women are egoists--and some men." She breathed her soft inscrutable ripple of laughter. "Let me hasten to confess, and crave a picture of myself."

"But the subject deserves an artist," he parried.

"He's afraid," she murmured to the fire. "He makes and unmakes senators--this Warwick; but he's afraid of a girl."

James lit a fresh cigarette in smiling silence.

"He has met me once--twice--no, three times," she meditated aloud. "But he knows what I'm like. He boasts of his divination and when one puts him to the test he repudiates."

"All I should have claimed is that I know I don't know what you are like."

"Which is something," she conceded.

"It's a good deal," he claimed for himself. "It shows a beginning of understanding. And--given the opportunity--I hope to know more." He questioned of her eyes how far he might go. "It's the incomprehensible that lures. It piques interest and lends magic. Behind those eyelids a little weary all the subtle hidden meaning of the ages shadows. The G.o.ds forbid that I should claim to hold the answer to the eternal mystery of woman."

"Dear me! I ask for a photograph and he gives me a poem," she mocked, touching an electric b.u.t.ton.

"I try merely to interpret the poem."

She looked at him under lowered lids with a growing interest. Her experience had not warranted her in hoping that he would prove worth while. It would be clear gain if he were to disappoint her agreeably.

"I think I have read somewhere that the function of present-day criticism is to befog the mind and blur the object criticised."

He considered an answer, but gave it up when a maid appeared with a tray, and after a minute of deft arrangement disappeared to return with the added paraphernalia that goes to the making and consuming of afternoon tea.

James watched in a pleasant content the easy grace with which the flashing hands of his hostess manipulated the brew. Presently she flung open a wing of the elaborate cellaret that stood near and disclosed a gleaming array of cut-gla.s.s decanters. Her fingers hovered over them.

"Cognac?"

"Think I'll take my tea straight just as you make it."

"Most Western men don't care for afternoon tea. You should hear my father on the subject."

"I can imagine him." He smiled. "But if he has tried it with you I should think he'd be converted."

She laughed at him in the slow tantalizing way that might mean anything or nothing. "I absolve you of the necessity of saying pretty things.

Instead, you may continue that portrait you were drawing when the maid interrupted."

"It's a subject I can't do justice."

She laughed disdainfully. "I thought it was time for the flattery. As if I couldn't extort that from any man. It's the A B C of our education.

But the truth about one's self--the unpalatable, bitter truth--there's a sting of unexpected pleasure in hearing that judicially."

"And do you get that pleasure often?"

"Not often. Men are dreadful cowards, you know. My father is about the only man who dares tell it to me."

Farnum put down his cup and studied her. She was leaning back with her fingers laced behind her head. He wondered whether she knew with what effectiveness the posture set off her ripe charms--the fine modeling of the full white throat, the perfect curves of the dainty arms bare to the elbows, the daring set of the tawny, tilted head. A spark glowed in his eyes.

"Far be it from me to deny you an accessible pleasure, though I sacrifice myself to give it. But my sketch must be merely subjective. I draw the picture as I see it."

She sipped her tea with an air of considering the matter. "You promise at least a family likeness, with not an ugly wrinkle of character smoothed away."

"I don't even promise that. For how am I to know what meaning lurks behind that subtle, shadowy smile? There's irony in it--and scorn--and sensuous charm--but back of them all is the great enigma."

"He's off," she derided slangily.