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"And how did she take it?"

"Like a warm shower in spring. She drank it all in and unfolded her petals."

"What poetical expressions he uses! That girl is more perverted than one would think possible, considering what she is and whence she came.  It's true that I, too, come from the same spot."

"She is slightly crazy. I am a great favourite with her.  I don't say this to boast."

"It must be very comforting."

"Yes, it has cheered me immensely. Then after a morning of delightful musings on one thing and another I went to lunch with a charming lady and spent most of the afternoon talking with her."

Dona Rita raised her head.

"A lady! Women seem such mysterious creatures to me.  I don't know them.  Did you abuse her?  Did she--how did you say that?--unfold her petals, too?  Was she really and truly . . .?"

"She is simply perfection in her way and the conversation was by no means banal. I fancy that if your late parrot had heard it, he would have fallen off his perch.  For after all, in that Allegre Pavilion, my dear Rita, you were but a crowd of glorified bourgeois."

She was beautifully animated now. In her motionless blue eyes like melted sapphires, around those red lips that almost without moving could breathe enchanting sounds into the world, there was a play of light, that mysterious ripple of gaiety that seemed always to run and faintly quiver under her skin even in her gravest moods; just as in her rare moments of gaiety its warmth and radiance seemed to come to one through infinite sadness,