“But, Vicomte,” Honora laughed, “you must remember that you are in America, and that you have come here to study our manners and customs.”

“Ah, no,” he cried, “ah, no, it cannot all be like this!  I will not believe it.  Mr. Holt, who sought to entertain me before luncheon, offered to show me his collection of Chinese carvings!  I, who might be at Trouville or Cabourg!  If it were not for you, Mademoiselle, I should not stay here—­not one little minute,” he said, with a slow intensity.  “Behold what I suffer for your sake!”

“For my sake?” echoed Honora.

“For what else?” demanded the Vicomte, gazing upon her with the eyes of martyrdom.  “It is not for my health, alas!  Between the coffee and this dimanche I have the vertigo.”

Honora laughed again at the memory of the dizzy Sunday afternoons of her childhood, when she had been taken to see Mr. Isham’s curios.

“You are cruel,” said the Vicomte; “you laugh at my tortures.”

“On the contrary, I think I understand them,” she replied.  “I have often felt the same way.”

“My instinct was true, then,” he cried triumphantly; “the first time my eyes fell on you, I said to myself, ‘ah! there is one who understands.’  And I am seldom mistaken.”

“Your experience with the opposite sex,” ventured Honora, “must have made you infallible.”

He shrugged and smiled, as one whose modesty forbade the mention of conquests.

“You do not belong here either, Mademoiselle,” he said.  “You are not like these people.  You have temperament, and a future—­believe me.  Why do you waste your time?”

“What do you mean, Vicomte?”

“Ah, it is not necessary to explain what I mean.  It is that you do not choose to understand—­you are far too clever.  Why is it, then, that you bore yourself by regarding Institutions and listening to sermons in your jeunesse?  It is all very well for Mademoiselle Susan, but you are not created for a religieuse.  And again, it pleases you to spend hours with the stockbroker, who is as lacking in esprit as the bull of Joshua.  He is no companion for you.”

“I am afraid,” she said reprovingly, “that you do not understand Mr. Spence.”

“Par exemple!” cried the Vicomte; “have I not seen hundreds’ like him?  Do not they come to Paris and live in the great hotels and demand cocktails and read the stock reports and send cablegrams all the day long? and go to the Folies Bergeres, and yawn?  Nom de nom, of what does his conversation consist?  Of the price of railroads;—­is it not so?  I, who speak to you, have talked to him.  Does he know how to make love?”

“That accomplishment is not thought of very highly in America,” Honora replied.

“It is because you are a new country,” he declared.

“And you are mad over money.  Money has taken the place of love.”

“Is money so despised in France?” she asked.  “I have heard—­that you married for it!”