“Why should I not go to Paris by myself?” she demanded.
“You mean now? On this ship?”
“Yes. Why not? I have enough money to go there and study, haven’t I?”
“Yes. But––”
“Why not!” she repeated feverishly, her grey eyes sparkling. “I have three thousand dollars; I can’t go back to Brookhollow and disgrace them. What does it matter where I go?”
“It would be all right,” he said, “if you’d ever had any experience––”
“Experience! What do you call what I’ve had today!” She exclaimed excitedly. “To lose in a single day my mother, my home—to go through in this city what I have gone through—what I am going through now—is not that enough experience? Isn’t it?”
He said:
“You’ve had a rotten awakening, Rue—a perfectly devilish experience. Only—you’ve never travelled alone––” Suddenly it occurred to him that his lively friend, the Princess Mistchenka, was sailing on the Lusitania; and he remained silent, uncertain, looking with vague misgivings at this girl in the armchair opposite—this thin, unformed, inexperienced child who had attained neither mental nor physical maturity.
“I think,” he said at length, “that I told you I had a friend sailing on the Lusitania tomorrow.”