of New York with loneliness, the zest gone from all present activity.
Presently with curious grip his thoughts returned to a certain
luncheon in New York with a tired literary man who had talked about
women with the air of a connoisseur. The pith of the writer's
observations was restored to his mind in this form:

"If I were to marry again it would be to a Latin woman--French,
Italian, even Spanish--a close-to-nature woman born and bred in one of
the Mediterranean countries. Not a blue-blood, for that has to do with
decadence, but a woman of the people. They are passionate but pure, as
Poe would say. If they find a man of any value, he becomes their
world. They are strong natural mothers--mothering their children and
their husband, too,--and immune to common sicknesses. Given a little
food, they know enough to prepare it with art. If a man has a bit of a
dream left, such a woman will either make him forget it painlessly, or
she will make it come true."

There was no apparent relation, and none that proved afterward. What
he had seen at the corner of Palace Square nearest the Vistula was not
the face of a Latin woman, nor was any looseness of common birth
evident in it. The key might have had to do with the little hat she
wore, just a hat for wearing on the head, a protection against sun and
rain, and with the austerely simple black dress; but these weathered
exteriors again were effective in contrast to the vivid freshness of
her natural coloring. As for what remained of the literary man's
picture of the ideal woman to marry, it was the last word of
decadence--the eminent selfishness of a man willing to accept the
luxury of a woman who asks little to be happy. ... The next day at the
same time and place Mowbray was there, and saw her coming from afar.