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And she of the half-world, who realizes too much! what she is, who gave heart and soul and body to a supreme self-abnegation only to be struck back from the blaze of her heaven with the brazen clamor of its closing gates clashing through her stunted brain she gathers the rags of her life around her and flies, a haunted and a hunted thing to the blackest depths, that can strangle thought and memory and brain.
These in turn pressed us with invitations to similar festivities of their own, and we thus became acquainted with the half-world of the modern Athens, which was much worse for us, I trow, than would have been the most desperate society of our college contemporaries.
The waiters were Chinese. Holt found an unoccupied table and ordered an oyster stew, then glanced about him for possible centres of interest. There were many women present, gaudily attired, but they were not the elite of the half-world. Neither did the gentlemen who made life gay and care-free for the haughty ladies of the lower ten thousand patronize anything so blatant.
Particularly were they indignant when, on reaching Brebant's Restaurant at the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre, they heard somebody playing a lively Offenbachian air on a piano there. A party of heedless viveurs and demoiselles of the half-world were enjoying themselves together as in the palmy imperial days.
For Paul had actually driven up to Brent Rock in the runabout of as notorious a woman as could have been found in the night life of the city one known as De Luxe Dora in the unsavory half-world in which both were leaders.
But there were others there who should not by any means be confounded with their sisters of the "half-world." The Faubourg St Germain, the Champs Elysees, and the Parc Monceau were possibly represented among those muffled and disguised beauties, who began the evening with their fans so handy in case of need.
And if the bronze horses had been minded to quit their station before the great window over the central arch, they might have paced around the night's whole half-world, and found no fairer resting-place. As for Christmas Day in Venice, it amounted to very little; every thing was closed, and whatever merry-making went on was all within doors.
Upon that wide polished floor of the splendidly decorated Rooms, with their beautiful mural paintings and heavy gilt ornamentation, the world and the half-world were upon equal footing.
Ivan's money kept her safely out of Russia, after the second day of the trial. And, while the girl mourned for him, she knew well that her own fortune in the half-world was made. Such advertising as this! Who could compete with her? Had not the papers in Europe published, twenty times, the picture of the beautiful heroine of this unsavory romance?
Invariably Hillard found himself speculating on the history of this woman or that; the more gems, the more history. Here the half-world of Europe finds its kingdom and rules it madly. The fortunes these women have poured into this whirligig of chance will never be computed.
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