She was no doubt five or six years older
than she looked or admitted, and probably her manager shrewdly
prescribed the "line" she had taken up. Young women on the
stage--actresses, dancers, or singers, it didn't matter which--must do
something unusual, in order to be talked about, and get a good free
advertisement. Nowadays, when professionals vied with each other in the
expensiveness of their jewels, the size of their hats, or the smallness
of their waists, and the eccentricity of their costumes, it was perhaps
rather a new note to wear no jewels at all, and appear in ready-made
frocks bought in bargain-sales; while, as for the young woman's air of
childlike innocence and inexperience, it might be a tribute to her
cleverness as an actress, but it was not a tribute to his intelligence
as a man, that he should have been taken in by it. Always, he told
himself, he was being taken in by some woman. After the lesson he had
had, he ought to have learned wisdom, but it seemed that he was as
gullible as ever. And it was this romantic folly of his which vexed him
now; not the fact that a simple child over whose fate he had
sentimentalized, was a rich and popular stage-dancer. Miss Ray was
probably a good enough young woman according to her lights, and it was
not she who need be shamed by the success of the Channel boat comedy.
He had another day and night in Paris, where he did more sightseeing
than he had ever accomplished before in a dozen visits, and then
travelled on to Marseilles.
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