"
"What will you say to me, when I take you away from all this,--when we
have to go back to Barcelona?"
"But I shall go with you?" The blue eyes were searching his face, and
there was fear as well as a question in them.
"Do you suppose I shall leave you here alone, child?" He hated himself
for the evasive answer.
He turned her thoughts to other things, bidding her talk of those days
they had spent together in Paris. She had named it Paradise, and to
her it had been indeed a place of enchantment, for she saw it for the
first time, and Vladimir was always with her.
She had seen its treasures of art, and abandoned herself to its glamour
with the enthusiasm and the freshness of a child.
She had looked out of place in the artificial atmosphere of the
boulevards, among the gas-lit _cafes_, dazzling shop-windows,
_flaneurs_ and gaily dressed women. A man who wrote poetry, and
starved on what he received for his verses in the Quartier Latin, had
stood beside her for a few moments in the Rue de Rivoli, and had gone
home to his garret inspired to produce some lines in which he compared
her to the delicate narcissus blooms that died so quickly in the flower
sellers' baskets.
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