here like other Americans, are you?” Her voice had a low, hoarse, and fatal note in it. “Promise me you won’t get stranded here.”
He promised her.
“How much money have you got, my boy—eh?” she said, her old eyes lighted with an avaricious gleam. A sudden apprehension shocked her; she started forward, saying quickly—“You’ve got enough to pay your bill? You’ve got enough to get you out of Orléans?… You won’t get stranded here at the hotel?”
He reassured her, and with a look of relief she continued:
“You must tell me every day how much you spend…. You must let me watch your money for you…. So few young men in America understand the value of money…. They throw it away as if it were dirt…. There are so many ways to waste your money here in France…. We have so many things to spend money on—it’s gone before you know it—restaurants, hotels, liquor, wine, cafés—Ah, cafés, cafés!” she sighed with dead fatality. “Cafés everywhere you go,” she said. “They are the curse of France. Cafés and women…. Have you met the women yet?” she demanded sharply.
He told her that he had.
“Yes, I know,” she said, her voice sad with its note of resigned fatality. “You meet them in cafés—bad women, waiting there to prey upon the young Americans…. Tell me—” the eager gleam awakened in her eyes again—“ have you given them much of your money?”
He told her that he had.
“Ah, I know,” she answered sadly. “All the young Americans waste their money in that way…. Don’t do it, my boy,” her claw-like hand went out and grasped his arm. “Promise me you will not give any more money away to those women…. They are bad, bad… the shame of France…. Get yourself a nice girl, my boy…. I know some nice girls here in Orléans…. I will introduce you—But don’t go to the cafés, my boy—Or, if you go, don’t talk to any of the women there…. No nice woman here in Orléans goes to the café… all the women that you meet there are bad, bad…. The best café,” she concluded irrelevantly, “is on the Place Martroi. You will find the women there…. If you go, tell me tomorrow about the music…. They have good music there…. I love good music…. One hears so little music here in Orléans…. There are so few amusements for a decent woman here…. Sometimes I want to go to the café to hear the music, but if I did I would no longer be a decent woman…. I suppose you’ll go to the café tonight?”
