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 If they exchanged places her interest perversely changed, too, and her performances helplessly directed themselves at the man who had moved to a distance; he at once became the more attractive to her. "Attractive" was her own word, and may be recorded as the most generously elastic in all her vocabulary; for, although a gentleman at a little distance was more "attractive" to her than one close at hand, it might be said that she was indifferent to no man whom she could possibly contrive to include under that definition. She even sheltered the Bastoni under it, partly because of their monocles, it is true; and her treatment of all "attractive" men seemed to indicate that she felt not only a spontaneous enthusiasm for the least of them but a duty to all of them—the duty, apparently, of offering them a focus for their attention, or, it might be, for their devotion.

Thus, though Arturo Liana, being at her side, was now in her eyes principally a picturesque adjunct of the scene she was playing to the gentleman at a distance, she was far from indifferent to him. On the contrary, she was not only interested in offering him a focus for devotion, but she was honestly interested in something fine and a little mysterious that she perceived in him. "You are mysterious," she told him,