Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/67

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The Land of the Cosmopolite

a few perfunctory words he led her away to supper. For the first time she thought his expression an unpleasant one, and wondered what had happened to transform him so.

“It is fortunate that I am not jealous,” he said, without looking at her, as they walked through the crowded rooms.

“Jealous?” she repeated, in some bewilderment.

“Yes, or I should n’t have liked the way that Russian talked to you.”

Anne was amused. “He was telling me that he conceives of God as the point of a triangle,” she said.

“He didn’t look as though he was talking of God,” answered Curatulo, with a smile that was unpleasantly dry.

“He conceives of God geometrically,” continued the girl.

“He did not look as though he were talking of geometry.”

“What did he look as if he were talking of?”

“What does a man usually talk of to a girl with whom he is evidently so much charmed that all the room can see it?”

“Let us hope that he was as much charmed as he looked,” said Anne gayly.

But Curatulo was not gay.

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