The Heart Line. Gelett Burgess
unruffled by the competition.
He made an airy gesture and followed the palmist into the anteroom.
Fancy grew listless and abstracted. After a while she went to the closet, examined herself in the glass on the door, adjusted the back of her belt, fluffed her hair over her ears and reseated herself. Then she took her book languidly and began to read.
There came a knock on the door.
"Come in," Fancy called out, arousing herself again. The new-comer was one who, though at least twenty-seven, was still graciously modeled with the lines of youth. Her head was poised with spirit on her neck, but, like a flower on its stem, ready to move with her varying moods, from languor to vivacity. Her hair was a light, tawny grayish-brown, almost yellow, undulant and fine as gossamer. In the pure oval of her face, under level, golden brows, her eyes were now questioning, now peremptory, but usually smoldering with dreams, hiding their color. Their customary quiescence, however, was contradicted by the responsiveness of her perfectly drawn mouth—a springing bow, like those of Du Maurier's most beautiful women. The upper lip, narrow, scarlet, so short that it seldom touched the lower, showed, beneath its lively curve, a row of well-cut teeth. With such charm and delicacy of person her small, flat ears and her proud, sensitive nostrils fell into lovely accord. She wore a veil, and was dressed in a concord of cool grays, modishly accented with black. Her movements were slow and graceful, as if she had never to hurry.
"I believe I have an appointment with Mr. Granthope for half-past eleven," she said in a smooth, low, rather monotonous voice.
"Miss Smith?" Fancy asked briskly, but with a more respectful manner than she had shown Mrs. Page.
The lady blushed an unnecessary pink, and blushed again to find herself blushing. She admitted the pseudonym with a nod.
"Take a seat, please," Fancy said. "Mr. Granthope will be ready for you in a few minutes." Then her eyes fluttered over the visitor's costume, rested for a second upon her long black gloves, darted to her little, patent-leather shoes, mounted to her black, picturesque hat, and sought here and there, but without success, for jewelry.
The lady took a seat in silence. She repaired the mischief the wind had done to her hair, raising her hand abstractedly, as she looked about the room. The Chinese masks did not entertain her long, but the head of Hypnos she appeared to recognize with interest. From that to Fancy, and from Fancy to the row of casts, her glance went, slowly, deliberately. Then she took a large bunch of violets from her corsage, and smelled them thoughtfully.
Fancy began to play with one of her bracelets, clasping and unclasping it. The lock caught in a bangle-chain, and, frowning, she bent to unfasten it. In an instant the lady noticed her dilemma, smiled frankly, and walked over to the desk, drawing off her long glove as she did so.
"Let me do it for you!" she said, and, taking Fancy's hand, she busied herself with the clasp.
Fancy watched her amusedly. The lady was so close that she could enjoy the odor of the violets and a fainter, more exquisite perfume that came from the diaphanous embroidered linen blouse, whose cost Fancy might have reckoned in terms of her week's salary. With careful, skilful movements the chain was unfastened, but the lady still held Fancy's hand in her own.
"Oh, what beautiful hands you have!" she exclaimed. "I never saw anything so lovely in my life! Let me see them both! I wonder if you know how pretty they are!"
She looked questioningly into Fancy's face and the twinkle in Fancy's eyes answered her.
"Oh, of course you do! Mr. Granthope must have told you! He has never seen a prettier pair, I'm sure!" She laid them carefully down, palms to the table, and smiled at Fancy.
"I see you've got the right idea about hands," said Fancy Gray archly. "That second finger's pretty good; did you notice it?"
Both laughed.
"I hope you don't think I'm rude," said the lady.
"You don't worry me a bit, so long as you can keep it up. I'm only afraid you're going to stop! But it seems to me you've got a pretty small pair of hands yourself! No wonder you noticed mine!" Fancy gazed at them, as if she were surprised to find any one who could compete with her own specialty.
For answer, Miss Smith, as she had called herself, drew her violets from her coat, kissed them and handed them to Fancy. Fancy played up; kissed them too, nodded, as if drinking a health, and tucked them safely away on her own breast. Then she treated Miss Smith to the by-play of her delicious dimples, as she said, "Come in as often as you like, especially when you have flowers!"
"Miss Smith's" face had become wonderfully alive, and she gazed at Fancy so frankly admiring that now Fancy had to drop her own eyes in embarrassment. At this moment Granthope's voice was heard as he came out of his studio with Gay P. Summer. A kind of shyness seemed to envelop the visitor and she drew back, her color mounting, her lids drooping.
"I'm all ready for you, Miss Smith," said Granthope, coming into the room and bowing suavely. "Come in, please."
Leaving Mr. Summer in conversational dalliance with Fancy Gray, the lady followed the palmist into his studio. As she walked, her graceful, long-limbed tread, with its easy swing, seemed almost leopard-like in its unconscious freedom, her head was carried somewhat forward, questing, her arms were slightly extended tentatively from her side, as if she almost expected to touch something she could not see.
CHAPTER II
TUITION AND INTUITION
It was a large room, unfurnished except for a couch in a recess of the wall and a table with two chairs drawn up under an electric-light bulb which hung from the ceiling. The walls were covered from floor to cornice by an arras of black velvet, falling in full, vertical folds, sequestering the apartment in soft gloom. Over the couch, this drapery was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac in a circle—all else was shadowy and mysterious.
The young woman walked into the place with her leisurely stride—her chin a little up-tilted, her eyes curious. In the center of the room she stopped and looked slowly and deliberately about her. The corners of her mouth lifted slightly with amusement, evidently at the obvious picturesqueness of the studio.
Granthope watched her keenly. With his eyes and ears full of Fancy Gray's ardent, dramatic youth, sparkling with the sophistication of the city, slangy, audacious, gay, this girl seemed almost unreal in her delicacy and exquisite virginity, a creature of dreams and faery, the personification of an ideal too fine and fragile for every-day. Her face showed caste in every line. He was a little afraid of her. Her bearing compelled not only respect, but, in a way, reverence—a tribute he seldom had felt inclined to pay to the mondaines who visited him.
His confidence, however, soon asserted itself. He had found that all women were alike—there were, as in chess, several openings to his game, but, once started, the strategy was simple.
"Well, how do you like my studio?"
"It's like dreams I've had," she said. "I like it. It's so simple."
"Most people think it too somber."
"It is somber; but that purple-black is wonderful in the way it takes the light. And it's all so different!"
"Yes, I flatter myself it is that. But I'm 'different' myself."
"Are you?" She turned her eyes steadfastly upon him for the first time, as if mentally appraising him, as he stood, six feet of virility, handsome, vivid and nonchalant. The color which had risen to her cheeks still remained.
"You are, too," he went on, examining her as deliberately.
She