The crude blue of her dress, the
tags and ends of tinselled braid set his teeth on edge. In his "Count
Poleski" days he had known the quiet and exquisite taste of the
_mondaines_ of Vienna and St. Petersburg, and like most men he
preferred dark clothes in the street. Later on he proposed to himself
the pleasure of supervising her wardrobe, except her boots, which met
with his fullest approbation.
He noticed that she did not talk much but observed in silence. He felt
that nothing escaped those heavy-lidded, curious eyes. "Is everything
dirty in Spain?" she said at last.
"How fussy you are about dirt!" retorted Emile disagreeably.
"Yes. My mother is a Jewess, you know. I expect we notice these
things more than the dirty Gentiles."
Her calm assertion of the superior cleanliness of the tribe of Israel,
amused Emile, who had been accustomed to hear the usual contempt of the
English-speaking races for anyone possessing a strain of Jewish blood.
So it was the Jewess in her that accounted for her haunting voice.
The Manager was a hatchet-faced and haggard man who looked as if he
went to bed about once a week, on an average, and existed principally
on cigarettes and _absinthe_.
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