It took nearly
all she had to settle the bill, but, as Madame remarked gayly,
Mademoiselle had left herself enough for an evening game at the Casino.
This was, of course, true, as more could somehow be obtained to-morrow.
For the moment Mary had forgotten her curiosity about the pleasant,
basking animal in the garden, but she decided that, after dinner--which
she must have soon, as she was already beginning to be hungry--she would
walk into the monster's smiling mouth.
VI
Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, known to his friends in Rome as Vanno,
went down early to dinner at the Paris. This, not because he was hungry,
but having come to the hotel because he knew that his Juliet of
Marseilles was there, he had no intention of missing a chance to look at
her. If she did not appear early, he would go on dining until it was
late, no matter how late.
Such a resolution, and just such an adventure as this into which he had
flung himself with characteristic impulsiveness and passion, were
strange for Prince Vanno, because since a first unhappy love, when he
was a mere boy, he had avoided women. Adventure and romance were in his
blood, the Italian blood of his father, the Irish-American blood of his
beautiful mother. But his adventures had not been love adventures, since
that first agony had driven him for comfort to the silence of the
desert. Since then he had gone back to the desert for desire of great
empty spaces, and the fire of eastern stars, needing comfort no longer
for a lost love.
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