"
"The house was in the Rue de Luxembourg--a corner house, where the
street is joined by a lane running from the Place du Parvis. He led
me to it that same evening, and Camillo came too, to make sure that I
was comfortable. It was a strange house and full of ladies, the most
of them young and all very handsomely dressed. But for their dresses
I could almost have fancied it some kind of convent. At all events,
they received me kindly, and many of them wept when they saw my
parting with Camillo."
Here the Princess paused, and sat silent for so long that I bent
forward in the dusk to read her face. She drew away, shivering, and
put up both hands as if to cover it.
"Well, Princess?"
"That house, Cavalier! . . . that horrible house! . . . Ah, remember
that I was a child, scarcely twelve years old--I had heard vile words
among the market folk, but they were words and meant nothing to me:
and now I saw things which I did not understand and--and I became
used to them before ever guessing that these were the things those
vile words had meant. The women were pretty, you see .
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