They are very
ingenuous, these Anglo-Saxons, but they are not diplomats."
She turned her head and looked across the auditorium. Maggie was talking
to a man whom Nigel had just brought in, and who was bending over her in
obvious admiration. Nita, with her wealth of cosmetics, her over-red
lips, stared curiously at this possible rival, with her clear skin, her
beautiful neck and shoulders, her hair dressed close to her head, her
air of quiet, almost singular distinction.
"The young lady," she confessed, "wears her clothes well for an English
woman. She is _bien soignee_, but she looks a little difficult."
His eyes followed the direction of hers, and her object was achieved.
She read correctly the light that gleamed in them.
"I may come to-night?" she asked quietly.
He shook his head.
"Not again," he replied.
A violinist now held the stage, a Pole newly come to London. La Belle
Nita closed her eyes. For a few minutes her sorrow seemed to throb to
the minor music to which she was listening.
"For all my work, then," she said presently, "for the suffering and the
risk, there is to be nothing?"
"Is it nothing for you to be invited to live in whatsoever manner you
choose?" he remonstrated.
"It is little," she replied steadily. "There are a dozen who would do
this for me, who pray every day that they may do so. What are all these
things beside the love of my master?"
He looked at her a little sadly, yet without any sign of real feeling.
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