As sweet and yielding Marie Roumanoff had seemed when she had lain in
his arms. A few years hence if Arithelli did not succeed in breaking
her neck in the ring, she would probably also make Paradise and Hell
for some man.
He could see that the dangerous crisis was over. She would live and
eventually go back to her work again. The swift intelligence, the wit
and charm of her--_A quoi bon_? She had been saved, and to what end?
For a dangerous and toilsome profession, and, in secret, another and
still greater peril.
Husband and children, and the average woman's uneventful, if happy,
fate could never be hers. Her very beauty was of the type almost
repellent to the strictly normal and healthy man.
She would no doubt have her hour of triumph, of passion. Some
_connoisseur_ of beauty would purchase her as a rare jewel is bought to
catalogue among his treasures.
In Paris she might achieve notoriety. Not now, perhaps, but later when
she had developed into a woman and knew her own power. Paris loved all
things strange, and gave homage to the woman who was among her fellows
as the orchid among flowers.
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