SHE was about twenty, Lucas thought, a supple-limbed young thing with brownish hair which had been carefully "waved" but which rather awry at the present moment; she had dark brows, pencilled and depilated to arch in a narrow, black curve; her lashes evidently had been treated, also; her lips carmined; she had characterless, but not unattractive, gray eyes; a too small but pert nose; a weak, pretty chin and small white teeth which she showed when she parted her lips as she looked up at the tall stranger. She displayed too—and not unintentionally—the whiteness of her neck and shoulders and the roundness of her small, firm busts. She was clad outwardly in a marvellous kimono-like silken garment with much lace and ribbons which she had fastened only at her waist, underneath she wore a half transparent pink blouse of some grotesque pyjama suit, the pantaloons of which extended below her kimono, leaving bare her ankles; her small, slender feet, bare, were thrust into those senseless, heelless satin creations which—Lucas knew—women called "mules." Evidently she had just arisen from bed.
"Smith here?" Lucas demanded of her curtly.
"Who?" said the girl.
"Your—husband. You're Mrs. Smith, I suppose."
