“Your friends, acquaintances——”
“Ah, there are too many. Life has been change to me, always change. Imagine me in early youth a young and tender plant. I throw out my tendrils and attach myself to this object—it is snatched away from me; to that one—it too is snatched away; and finally my tendrils are all gone. Suppose the most charming object to come within my reach, I have no tendril to grasp it. Nothing remains but my country.”
“That will all change some day,” said the man sententiously.
“In what manner?” she asked.
“You will meet some man in whom everything will become merged—friends, country, everything.”
“You mean that I shall fall in love?”
“I do.”
“Possibly,” she said with a gay laugh. “Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as I have told you, I make few attachments; and if I did I never stay long enough in one place for one to mature. This winter I fancied that I was settled in Paris, but you see I am summoned here.”