"A convent school! Now,
my son, what puzzled you in her is made clear. I, at least, might have
guessed. A girl brought up by a band of good and innocent cloistered
women must always be different from other girls. She should not be let
out to wander alone in the world without guardians, as this child has
been; for without a guide a few mistakes at the beginning are certain.
Now, she has made all the mistakes she need ever make; and she is no
longer alone."
"Never again!" Vanno said fervently, pressing her hand under the blue
cover of dusk.
It did not occur to Mary that they both took her for a much younger girl
than she really was. She had lived so entirely under the jurisdiction of
those older than herself that in many ways she had remained a child. And
she had begun by feeling still younger than before, after suddenly
blossoming into independence. It was only since the night of Christmas,
when the frost of unhappiness nipped the newly unfolded petals, that the
flower had begun to droop. Now that dark time was already forgotten. She
could hardly realize that it had ever been. In the joy of Vanno's love
for her, and his old friend's fatherly kindness, she basked in the
contentment of being understood, loved, taken care of; and she knew that
she was a woman, not a child, only by the capacity to love a man as a
woman loves. If she had said, "But I am nearly twenty-five," the two
men would have realized at once that her school days must have ended
long ago, even if prolonged beyond the usual time; and they would have
asked themselves, if they had not asked her, where she had spent the
years between then and now, in order to account for that ignorance of
the world which to them explained and excused everything she had done at
Monte Carlo.
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