The room in which she digested her chop especially pleased her. Carpet, curtains, and upholstery were rose-coloured, the walls were green satin, with half a dozen excellent prints on them, and by the window was an immense Louis XV. couch covered in brocade, with a mass of pillows on it. Here, the morning after her opening night in New York, she was lying and basking like a cat in the heat, smoking tiny rose-scented Russian cigarettes, and expecting with some anticipation of amusement the arrival of Bertie Keynes. Round her lay piles of press notices, which stripped the American variety of the English language bare of epithets. She was deeply absorbed in these, and immense smiles of amusement from time to time crossed her face. On the floor lay her huge mastiff, which, with the true time-serving spirit, rightly calculated to be thoroughly popular, she had rechristened Teddy Roosevelt. Her great coils of auburn hair were loosely done up, and her face, a full, sensuous oval, was of that brilliant warm-blooded colouring which testified to the authenticity of the smouldering gold of her hair. Lying there in the hot room, brilliant with colour and fragrant with the scent of innumerable flowers (the account for which was sent in to Mr. Bilton), she seemed the embodiment of vitality and serene Paganism. Not even her friends—and they were many—ever accused her of morality, but, on the other hand, all children adored her. That is an item not to be disregarded when the moralist adds up the balance-sheet.
In spite of his excuse of the night before, Bertie Keynes had taken Bilton's advice, and before long he was announced.
' Bertie, Bertie!' she cried as he came in, ' I wake up to find myself famous. I am magnetic, it appears, beyond all powers of comprehension. I am vimmy—am I really vimmy, do you think, and what does it mean? I am a soulful incarnation of adorable——— Oh no; it's Teddy
