... Now let's
talk of something else. When are you going to take me to Louvain?"
* * * * *
They went to Louvain a few days later and Vivie's newly awakened
senses for the beautiful in art revelled in the glorious
architecture, so much of which was afterwards wrecked in the War.
Walking beneath the planes in a narrow street between monastic
buildings, they descried a gaunt, stately figure of a Father
Superior of some great Order. "There!" said Mrs. Warren; "that's
him, that's your father." They quickened their pace and were
presently alongside him. He flashed his great, grey eagle eyes for a
contemptuous second on the face of Mrs. Warren, who was all of a
tremble and could not meet the gaze. Vivie, he scarcely glanced at
as he strode towards a doorway which engulfed him, though the eyes
she had inherited would have met his unflinchingly.
* * * * *
David Williams duly visited Antwerp, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Berlin,
Vienna, and Buda-Pest. Much of what he saw disgusted, even revolted,
him, but he found few of his fellow-countrywomen held captive and
crying to be delivered from a life of infamy. On his return to
England in the autumn of 1909, he published the results of his
observations; but they had very little effect on continental public
opinion.
However Mrs. Warren in due course turned her two establishments into
hotels that gradually acquired a well-founded character of propriety
and were in time included amongst those recommended to quiet,
studious people by first class tourist agencies.
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