With Vanno's arms around her, Mary wondered
how she could ever have felt that the Casino was a vast magnet
compelling her to come to it in spite of herself, drawing her thoughts
and her money to itself, as an immense magnetic rock might draw the
nails from the sides of a frail little boat. With Mary's fingers warm
and soft as rose-petals against his neck, her cheek on his, Vanno could
have laughed with contemptuous pity at the wretched image of himself
which he seemed to see down below, stupidly hurrying along with an
offering for the Casino. He was not so much shocked at his own yielding
to the attraction as he was surprised that there could have been so
strong an attraction.
"Doesn't it look stupid down there?" Mary asked, almost in a whisper.
"Like a lot of toy houses for children to play with?"
"And the children are tired of playing with them!" Vanno answered. "The
toys there were only worth playing with when there was nothing better to
do."
"That's it!" she echoed. "When there was nothing better to do. I think
that was what the cure must have meant."
"The cure!" Vanno echoed. "I'd forgotten him!"
"So had I. How ungrateful of us. But you have made me forget everything
except--_you_."
She rose slowly, reluctantly, and then pretended to exert her strength
in lifting him up from his knees. "The cure stayed away on purpose," she
said.
"Yes. For he meant this to happen--just as it has."
Mary smiled, half closing her eyes, so that the world swam before her in
a radiant mist.
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