"
"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."
"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has
been that this girl--this girl who has a child's face, I tell you,
Father--seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the
type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine
softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood--or
romance. I can't describe it."
"You have made me understand," the cure answered quietly. "And you have
made me--for your sake--want to find out as soon as I possibly can what
truth is under all this sweetness."
XI
The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was,
"At what hour does the Casino open?"
Ten o'clock, she was told.
It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!
Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her
life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's
table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure
whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with
the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.
From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of
the Casino, whose doors were still closed.
"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an
accident.
"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter
explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg,
poached and adorned according to the conception of a French _chef_.
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