Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/31

 out to me as an explorer who no longer explores and a writer who no longer writes. It is strange that, being still young, he should have done so much and already stopped doing it.”

To the American women Gino Curatulo could not seem other than an extravagantly foreign figure as he presented himself before them. There was an exquisitely careful elaboration to his dress; he wore a boutonnière, and had a monocle suspended from his neck, his short mustache tipped gallantly upward, and as he bowed to the married woman he carried her hand to his lips. These things, added to an excessive swarthiness of skin and the slight accent of his otherwise excellent English, made him appear to Margaret an almost artificial figure. An Italian marquis in an American play would be “made up” in much the same way and seem no more improbable; but Margaret Garrison had never been to Europe before, nor conceived of other type of manliness than that represented by the comparatively large-boned and simply-dressed man of her own land, nor of other manners than his informal, undecorative courtesy.

Anne had traveled more. The Latin gentleman, as seen in the best hotels and restaurants, was not unknown to her, but she was conscious that never before had she conversed with so highly finished a