fear I have done you a great disservice, Sofia. From the time you were a child, I have lured you into a life that is principally circumscribed by the four walls of this building. We all have. Marina, Andrey, Emile, and I. We have ventured to make the hotel seem as wide and wonderful as the world, so that you would opt to spend more time in it with us. But your mother was perfectly right. One does not fulfill one’s potential by listening to Scheherazade in a gilded hall, or by reading the Odyssey in one’s den. One does so by setting forth into the vast unknown—just like Marco Polo when he
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