" She waved Peyton away unceremoniously, "Come, everybody has
had enough drinks, and show it to me." They passed through the hall,
and into the quiet of the space beyond, lighted by a single unobtrusive
lamp. "What a satisfactory fireplace!" she exclaimed in her faint key,
as though, Lee thought, her silent acting were depriving her of voice.
She sank onto the cushioned bench against the partition. "How did they
feel, do you suppose--the people, the men and women, who belonged to
such things?" As Lee watched her it seemed that she grew more remote,
shadowy, like a memory of long vanished beauty made before his eyes
from the shifting firelight and immaterial shadows. Mina Raff lost her
reality in an unreal charm that compressed his heart. The atmosphere
around her stirred with re-created dead emotions. Then:
"Ah!" she cried softly, unexpectedly, "what a wonderful doll." She
rose, with a graceful gesture of her hands up to where Cytherea rested.
"Where did you get her? But that doesn't matter: do you suppose, would
it be possible for me, could I buy her?"
"I'm sorry," Lee answered promptly; "we can't do without her. She
belongs to Helena," he lied.
"But not to a child," Mina Raff protested, with what, in her, was
animation and color; "it has a wicked, irresistible beauty." She gazed
with a sudden flash of penetration at Lee Randon. "Are you sure it's
your daughter's?" she asked, once more repressed, negative.
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