There was a long silence, and then the demi-mondaine looked up.
For once, the demi-mondaine was alone, bored to extinction by the blatant ribaldry of Octave Mirbeau.
There was--Lawless was quick to observe it--the unmistakable stamp of the demi-mondaine about her.
It is this determined spirit of coquetry which leads the mondaine of Paris to make up in a fashion which in other cities is relegated chiefly to the class without the social gates.
Probably it is more deplorable in proportion as it takes on attractiveness; but we are not moralizing, merely stating facts, and the fascination of the great Parisian demi-mondaine is a well-established fact.
The comparison extends only to the province of clothes, and as we have said before, the great demi-mondaine of Paris is the best dressed woman in the world.
She may be no more perfectly dressed, this mondaine, than her demi-mondaine sister of Armenonville.
Illustration: The latest Plaything of the Duchesse d'Uzes] Frankly speaking, the cafe retains its vogue by favour of the demi-mondaine of Paris.
You must not confuse the demi-mondaine with the grande cocotte.
Let the student of morals who associates the phrase demi-mondaine only with Tenderloin orgies revise his vocabulary.
The demi-mondaine of Paris is--one can but have recourse once more to that untranslatable comprehensive word "chic.
Never had he heard a mondaine cite the Upanishads.
But as soon as champagne was served she had drunk of it, she had drunk since and in her manner, in the way she held herself, in the inflection of her voice, there had entered a trace of the excessive which the mondaine avoids.
It is a Stereo-Mondaine and he have a strong want to prend some photographs of the garden and peoples which is done from colours already, very rippin'.
The Stereo-Mondaine accepted at once, lest the Monsieur should change his mind; and Vanno having taken the plate from him, he proceeded to produce others.
The Stereo-Mondaine was disposed of, while Angelo took the glass plate from Vanno, and looked at the picture.
