(If it had only been possible to establish a
scale of fees for these functions, her manager used to reflect
despairingly, he might have come out even after all.) Any other sort of
engagement melted away like snow in the face of an opportunity of
meeting Simone Greville.
Rose had met her a number of times before the incident referred to
happened, but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. What could she,
whose acquaintance with Europe was limited to one three-months trip,
undertaken by the family during the summer after she graduated from high
school, have to say to an omniscient cosmopolite like that?
So she hung about, within ear-shot when it was possible, and watched,
leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured
illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione
Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good
enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Greville's English.
She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard
the actress make the remark already quoted, to the effect that American
women seemed to her to be an exception to what she always supposed to be
the general law of sex attraction.
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