"Mademoiselle Nioche is welcome to be tickled by my curiosity, and to
know that I am tickled that she is tickled. She is not so much tickled,
by the way."
"You had better go and tell her," Newman rejoined. "She gave me a
message for you of some such drift."
"Bless your quiet imagination," said Valentin, "I have been to see
her--three times in five days. She is a charming hostess; we talk of
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. She is extremely clever and a very
curious type; not at all coarse or wanting to be coarse; determined not
to be. She means to take very good care of herself. She is extremely
perfect; she is as hard and clear-cut as some little figure of a
sea-nymph in an antique intaglio, and I will warrant that she has not
a grain more of sentiment or heart than if she was scooped out of a
big amethyst. You can't scratch her even with a diamond.
Extremely pretty,--really, when you know her, she is wonderfully
pretty,--intelligent, determined, ambitious, unscrupulous, capable of
looking at a man strangled without changing color, she is upon my honor,
extremely entertaining."
"It's a fine list of attractions," said Newman; "they would serve as a
police-detective's description of a favorite criminal. I should sum them
up by another word than 'entertaining.'"
"Why, that is just the word to use.
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