e Prince of Wales does not begin to smoke till
between the second and third courses--never sooner. You are
anticipating.'

Bebe Silva had lighted a cigarette and was eating oysters, while she let
the smoke curl through her nostrils. She was like a restless schoolboy,
a little depraved hermaphrodite; pale and thin, the brightness of her
eyes heightened by fever and kohl, with lips that were too red, and
short and rather woolly hair that covered her head like an astrachan
cap. Fixed tightly in her left eye was a single eye-glass; she wore a
high stiff collar, a white necktie, an open waistcoat, a little black
coat of masculine cut and a gardenia in her button-hole. She affected
the manners of a dandy and spoke in a deep husky voice. And just therein
lay the secret of her attraction--in this imprint of vice, of depravity,
of abnormity in her appearance, her attitudes and her words. _Sal y
pimienta_.

Maria Fortuna, on the contrary, was of somewhat bovine type, a Madame de
Parabere with a tendency to stoutness.

Like the fair mistress of the Regent, she possessed a very white skin,
one of those opaque white complexions which seem only to flourish and
improve on sensual pleasure. Her liquid violet eyes swam in a faint blue
shadow; and her lips, always a little parted, disclosed a vague gleam of
pearl behind their soft rosy line, like a half-opened shell.

Giulia Arici took Andrea's fancy very much on account of her
golden-brown tints and her great velvety eyes of that soft deep
chestnut that sometimes shows tawny gleams. The somewhat fleshy nose,
and the full, dewy scarlet, very firm lips gave the lower part of her
face a frankly animal look. Her eye-teeth, which were too prominent,
raised her upper lip a little and she continually ran the point of her
tongue along the edge to moisten it, like the thick petal of a rose
running over a row of little white almonds.

'Giulia,' said Andrea with his eyes on her mouth, 'Saint Bernard uses,
in one of his sermons, an epithet which would suit you marvellously. And
I'll be bound you don't know this either.'

Giulia laughed her sonorous rather vacant laugh, exhaling, in the
excitement of her hilarity, a more poignant perfume, like a scented
shrub when it is shaken.

'What will you give me,' continued Andrea, 'if I extract from the holy
sermon a voluptuous motto to fit you?'

'I don't know,' she replied laughing, holding a glass of Chablis in her
long slender fingers. 'Anything