As they turned into the Boulevard, and jogged past the Jardin de Cluny, Eugenia asked tensely, "What are those queer looking broken-down walls?"
Marise answered circumspectly, fearing another out-burst, "I think they're Roman ruins … what's left of the baths the Romans had here."
Eugenia made no answer, but looked at them hard.
Marise went on, "Awfully interesting, isn't it, to see Roman ruins right in Paris, across the street from a café. But I suppose they'd look like small potatoes to anybody who's seen Rome. Mme. Vallery says they look comically small, after Rome."
Eugenia put her arm around her neck, and kissed her once more, fervently, disturbingly, on the lips, "Would you like to go to Rome? I'll take you to Rome. I'll hire a private car for the two of us."
And before Marise could answer, before she could even bring out the laugh which rose to her lips, Eugenia said with another of her abrupt leaps, "That young man is in love with you. The one who came in afterwards. He's awfully good-looking, too." She looked into Marise's face with her avid, penetrating gaze, and said, "But you don't like him!"
"I never thought about him in my life," cried Marise, exasperated. She was beginning to feel desperately tired of the mental gymnastics of such talk.
"But there was something you didn't like as I spoke about him. Don't you like men? Don't you like men to be in love with you? I do, I love it." She made another flying leap, and asked, "Are many French women like your music-teacher—so fat—no style?"
"She's not French, Madame de la Cueva."
"What, then?"
"A Levantine."
"A what? What's a Levantine?"
Marise considered, "What is a Levantine, anyhow? A little of everything, I should say, and all more or less oriental and southern. She's part Spanish, part Jewish from Asia Minor, brought up in Cairo and Paris."
