Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/440

 one of those crude speeches of his, and a recurring expression of quiet fatigue on Miss Mills's face when they had had a little too large a dose of Crittenden were the only traces of their real feelings which showed on the surface.

That famous soirée at Donna Antonia Pierleoni's had seemed to be the start of all this agreeable new period of sociability. Livingstone abhorred fatuous men, but it really was rather a remarkable coincidence that after seeing him for the first long talk they had ever had, Miss Mills should at once have decided to come to the pension where he was staying. She had never had a real opportunity to know him before that, Mlle. Vallet always shadowing her around, the conversation always stiffly in French in deference to Mlle. Vallet's feelings. That, after her first real impression of him, she should immediately have moved into a room three doors down the corridor from his—any man might be pardoned for considering it marked, really marked. It quite fluttered Livingstone with the idea of the possibilities involved—although he scorned fortune-hunters above all other men. It was not her fortune, it was her wonderful little person that he admired, the perfection of the finish of every detail of her body and mind. Livingstone often felt a sincere reverence as he looked at her beautiful hair and skin and clothes and hands and feet that had cost—oh, nobody knew how much to bring them to that condition. And her accomplishments, her exquisite French and pure Italian, her knowledge of art-critics, and which Luini was considered authentic and which spurious! The harmonious way she sat down or stood or sat at table! There was a product of European civilization at its finest! How crude and coarse-grained the usual striding, arm-swinging American girl would seem beside her, like a rough, splintery board beside a finished piece of marquetry. Even Miss Allen, who was, one might say, carelessly and indifferently European simply because she happened to have been brought up in France, often seemed rough and abrupt compared to her. There was nothing of the deliberate, finished self-consciousness about Miss Allen's manners, which Livingstone had learned to admire as the finest flower of sophistication. It was true