She poured another cup, and seasoned it with care. Marise ventured to say mildly, "I'm afraid I'm rather cold. I don't ... I haven't ever cared much for men." Madame de la Cueva shook her head, "Every unawakened girl thinks that. And once in a while there is a monster born, sometimes a man, more often a woman, who is born really cold--like a born half-wit or a two-headed cat. But any one of experience can feel them in the room, as you feel a snake. _You_ are not cold, my darling. No one who can play The Tragica as you do, is cold. You are only a child. You Anglo-Saxons take so long to ripen. But all the better for your technique--that quaint prolongation of infancy. But _now_," she put down her cup and looked at Marise deeply and masterfully, "now your infancy has lasted long enough. In with you! Dive from the nearest rock! Head over heels! I shall hear the splash from across the world and rejoice." Marise laughed a little nervously, partly because she was amused and partly because she was excited. That great mass of personality, radiating magnetism, would excite a statue on a tomb, she thought to herself, even though you didn't at all share her tastes, or like the things she did. "And when I say, 'in with you,' I don't mean any of the sentimental slip-noose business of becoming a house-mother with children--oh, whatever else, my dear, no children. The only artists who can afford to have children are men, because men never really love their children and can abandon them at any time they need to. No woman can do that. Even _I_ could never have done that! "You see, carissima mea, in love a man always keeps most of himself for himself, as in everything else. You must do the same if you are not to be cheated in every bargain that life offers you. It is a hard lesson to learn. It will cost you many tears. But tears are valuable. You cannot live and be an artist, without tears. Shed them freely and you will see how you will grow." She looked at her watch, "I expect Georges at five," she explained, and swept on to her peroration, "Remember, think of all I tell you when your wise old friend who knows life is far away. Remember! None of your Anglo-Saxon nonsense about trying to get along without sex-life. Take it, take all you need of it, but keep it separate from your real life as a man does, and it will never poison or embitter you." She laughed a little, triumphantly, "You will _do_ all the embittering instead of enduring it. You have beauty. You can buy anything you want with it, if you learn how to use it. You have what will advance you more than any talent for music! You have a nice talent, but you will go ten times as far as a woman with a big nose and poor hair. Make your brain a little mint, my darling, coin your good looks into legal tender, and buy success." She kissed the girl and dismissed her, with another look at her watch and then into the mirror.