later, in the year when America entered the Great War; not since ...

"It is my home," said Eve de Montalais softly, looking away.

(One noted that she said "is"--not "was.")

So Duchemin had understood. Madame had not visited her home recently?

Not in many years; not in fact since nineteen-thirteen. She assumed the
city must have changed greatly.

Duchemin thought it was never the same, but forever changing itself
overnight, so to speak; and yet always itself, always like no other
city in the world, fascinating....

"Fascinating? But irresistible! How I long for it!" She was distrait
for an instant. "My New York! Monsieur--would you believe?--I dream of
it!"

He had found a key to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As
much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she
began to talk of her life "at home"....

Her father had been a partner in a great jewellery house, Cottier's, of
Paris, London, and New York. (So that explained it! She was wearing the
blue diamond again tonight, with other jewels worth, in the judgment of
a keen connoisseur, a king's ransom.) Schooled at an exclusive
establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early
age had made her début; but within the year her father died, and her
mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed