"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that it's hard for me to believe in others."
"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 curé 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.