It was such faint whisperings as this which,
repeated often, had driven her from the convent.
"How young I am!" she thought, for once actively self-conscious. "How
young I am, and how young the world is!"
She let her eyes fall from the sky and plunge into the turmoil of the
station, turmoil of people getting in and out of trains, of porters
running with luggage, of restaurant employes wheeling stands of food
through the crowd, piled oranges and mandarines, and white grapes,
decorated with leaves and a few flowers; soldiers arriving or saying
goodbye, jolly dark youths in red and blue; an Arab trying to sell
scarfs from Algiers; a Turkish family travelling; English men and women
newly landed, with P. & O. labels large on their hand-bags; French
_bonnes_ wearing quaint stiff caps and large floating ribbons; Indian
ayahs wrapped in shawls. Mary gazed at the scene as if it were a
panorama, and scarcely dwelt upon individuals until her eyes were drawn
by the eyes of a man.
It was when she had mounted the steps of her own car, and turned once
more before going in. So she looked down at the man looking up.
She blushed under the eyes, for there was something like adoration in
them, romantic admiration such as a man may feel for the picture of a
lovely saint against a golden background, or the poetic heroine of a
classic legend. They were extraordinarily handsome eyes, dark and
mysterious as only Italian eyes can be, though Mary Grant did not know
this, having gazed into few men's eyes, and none that were Italian.
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