I like adventures--I adore excitement; in fact I must have
it."
"You shall," I promised. "I'll take you to Paris and Monte Carlo. We'll go
up to Khartum and take a caravan beyond. You shall go big-game shooting
with me in Africa. I'll take you where very few women have been before.
I'll take you where you can gamble with life and death instead of this
sordid business of freedom or prison. We'll start for Abyssinia in three
weeks if you like. I'll find you excitement--the right sort. I'll take you
into the big places, where one feels--and the empty places, where one
suffers."
Her eyes flashed sympathetically for a moment.
"It sounds good," she admitted, "and yet--am I ungrateful, I wonder?--
there's no excitement for me except where men and women are. I'm afraid
I'm a daughter of Babylon."
"Doomed from her infancy to a life of crime, I fear," Mr. Parker declared,
pinching a cigar he had just taken out of a box. "She loves the rapier
play--the struggle with men and women. Takes risks every moment of the
time and thrives on it. All the same, Mr. Walmsley, there's something very
attractive about the way you are talking. I am not going to let my little
girl decide too hastily. Our sort of life's all very well when we are
number one and Mr.
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