Antonia sipped her chocolate with a composure that startled him. Women—except the most experienced—were apt to be fluttered by his lightest attentions; yet this girl, who had never seen him till to-night, accepted his homage with a supreme unconcern, or indeed seemed unconscious of it. Her innocent assurance amused him. No rustic lass serving at an inn had ever received his compliments without a blush, for he had an air of always meaning more than he said.
"Your father told me he had reared you in seclusion, madam," he said, "and I take it this is your first glimpse of our gay world."
"My first and last," she replied. "I do not love your gay world. I did wrong to tease my father to bring me here. I imagined a scene so different."
"Tell me what your fancy depicted."
"Larger rooms, fewer people, more space and air—a fête champêtre by Watteau within doors; dancers who danced for love of dancing, and who were all young, not old wrinkled men and fat women; not painted grimacing faces, and an atmosphere cloudy with hair-powder."
"But is not this better than to sit in your lodgings and mope over books?"
"I never mope over books; they are my friends and companions."
"What, in the bloom of youth, when you should be dancing every night, gadding from one pleasure to another all day long? Books are the friends of old age. I shall take to books myself when I grow old."
Tonia's dark brows elevated themselves unconsciously, and her eyes expressed wonder. Was he not old enough already for books and retirement? The man of seven and forty saw the look and interpreted it.
"She knows I am old enough to be her father," he thought, "and that is the reason of her sang froid. Women of the world know that mine is the dangerous age—the age when a man who can love loves desperately, when concentration of purpose takes the place of youthful energy."