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A Daughter of To-Day

by Sara Jeannette Duncan · English · Gutenberg #14490 · 492,860 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Daughter of To-Day

Author: Sara Jeannette Duncan


        
Release date: December 28, 2004 [eBook #14490]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14490

Credits: This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY ***

This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.






A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY
by Sara Jeannette Duncan




CHAPTER I.

Miss Kimpsey dropped into an arm-chair in Mrs. Leslie
Bell's drawing-room and crossed her small dusty feet
before her while she waited for Mrs. Leslie Bell. Sitting
there, thinking a little of how tired she was and a great
deal of what she had come to say, Miss Kimpsey enjoyed
a sense of consideration that came through the ceiling
with the muffled sound of rapid footsteps in the chamber
above. Mrs. Bell would be "down in a minute," the maid
had said. Miss Kimpsey was inclined to forgive a greater
delay, with this evidence of hasteful preparation going
on overhead. The longer she had to ponder her mission
the better, and she sat up nervously straight pondering
it, tracing with her parasol a sage-green block in the
elderly aestheticated pattern of the carpet.

Miss Kimpsey was thirty-five, with a pale, oblong
little face, that looked younger under its softening
"bang" of fair curls across the forehead. She was a
buff-and-gray-colored creature, with a narrow square chin
and narrow square shoulders, and a flatness and straightness
about her everywhere that gave her rather the effect of
a wedge, to which the big black straw hat she wore tilted
a little on one side somehow conduced. Miss Kimpsey might
have figured anywhere as a representative of the New
England feminine surplus--there was a distinct suggestion
of character under her unimportant little features--and
her profession was proclaimed in her person, apart from
the smudge of chalk on the sleeve of her jacket. She had
been born and brought up and left over in Illinois,
however, in the town of Sparta, Illinois. She had developed
her conscience there, and no doubt, if one knew it well,
it would show peculiarities of local expansion directly
connected with hot corn-bread for breakfast, as opposed
to the accredited diet of legumes upon which consciences
arrive at such successful maturity in the East. It was,
at all events, a conscience in excellent controlling
order. It directed Miss Kimpsey, for example, to teach
three times a week in the boys' night-school through the
winter, no matter how sharply the wind blew off Lake
Michigan, in addition to her daily duties at the High
School, where for ten years she had imparted instruction
in the "English branches," translating Chaucer into the
modern dialect of Sparta, Illinois, for the benefit of
Miss Elfrida Bell, among others. It had sent her on this
occasion to see Mrs. Leslie Bell, and Miss Kimpsey could
remember circumstances under which she had obeyed her
conscience with more alacrity.

"It isn't," said Miss Kimpsey, with internal discouragement,
"as if I knew her well."

Miss Kimpsey did not know Mrs. Bell at all well. Mrs.
Bell was president of the Browning Club, and Miss Kimpsey
was a member, they met, too, in the social jumble of
fancy fairs in aid of the new church organ; they had a
bowing acquaintance--that is, Mrs. Bell, had. Miss
Kimpsey's part of it was responsive, and she always gave
a thought to her boots and her gloves when she met Mrs.
Bell. It was not that the Spartan social circle which
Mrs. Bell adorned had any vulgar prejudice against the
fact that Miss Kimpsey earned her own living--more than
one of its ornaments had done the same thing--and Miss
Kimpsey's relations were all "in grain" and obviously
respectable. It was simply that none, of the Kimpseys,
prosperous or poor, had ever been in society in Sparta,
for reasons which Sparta itself would probably be unable
to define; and this one was not likely to be thrust among
the elect because she taught school and enjoyed life upon
a scale of ethics.

Mrs. Bell's drawing-room was a slight distraction to Miss
Kimpsey's nervous thoughts. The little school-teacher
had never been in it before, and it impressed her. "It's
just what you would expect her parlor to be," she said
to herself, looking furtively round. She could not help
her sense of impropriety; she had always been taught that
it was very bad manners to observe anything hi another
person's house, but she could not help looking either.
She longed to get up and read the names of the books
behind the glass doors of the tall bookcase at the other
end of the room, for the sake of the little quiver of
respectful admiration she knew they would give her; but
she did not dare to do that. Her eyes went from the
bookcase to the photogravure of Dore's "Entry into
Jerusalem," under which three Japanese dolls were arranged
with charming effect. "The Reading Magdalen" caught them
next, a colored photograph, and then a Magdalen of more
obscure origin in much blackened oils and a very deep
frame; then still another Magdalen, more modern, in
monochrome. In fact, the room was full of Magdalens, and
on an easel in the corner stood a Mater Dolorosa, lifting
up her streaming eyes. Granting the capacity to take them
seriously, they might have depressed some people, but
they elevated Miss Kimpsey.

She was equally elevated by the imitation willow pattern
plates over the door, and the painted yellow daffodils
on the panels, and the orange-colored _Revue des Deux
Mondes_ on the corner of the table, and the absence of
all bows or draperies from the furniture. Miss Kimpsey's
own parlor was excrescent with bows and draperies. "She
is above them," thought Miss Kimpsey, with a little pang.
The room was so dark that she could not see how old the
_Revue_ was; she did not know either that it was always
there, that unexceptionable Parisian periodical, with
Dante in the original and red leather, _Academy Notes_,
and the _Nineteenth Century_, all helping to furnish Mrs.
Leslie Bell's drawing-room in a manner in accordance with
her tastes; but if she had, Miss Kimpsey would have been
equally impressed. It took intellect even to select these
things. The other books, Miss Kimpsey noticed by the
numbers labelled on their backs, were mostly from the
circulating library--"David Grieve," "Cometh up as a
Flower," "The Earthly Paradise," Ruskin's "Stones of
Venice," Marie Corelli's "Romance of Two Worlds." The
mantelpiece was arranged in geometrical disorder, but it
had a gilt clock under a glass shade precisely in the
middle. When the gilt clock indicated, in a mincing way,
that Miss Kimpsey had been kept waiting fifteen minutes,
Mrs. Bell came in. She had fastened her last button and
assumed the expression appropriate to Miss Kimpsey at
the foot of the stair. She was a tall, thin woman, with
no color and rather narrow brown eyes much wrinkled round
about, and a forehead that loomed at you, and grayish
hair twisted high into a knot behind--a knot from which
a wispy end almost invariably escaped. When she smiled
her mouth curved downward, showing a number of large even
white teeth, and made deep lines which suggested various
things, according to the nature of the smile, on either
side of her face. As a rule one might take them to mean
a rather deprecating acceptance of life as it stands--they
seemed intended for that--and then Mrs. Bell would express
an enthusiasm and contradict them. As she came through
the door under the "Entry into Jerusalem," saying that
she really must apologize, she was sure it was unpardonable
keeping Miss Kimpsey waiting like this, the lines expressed
an intention of being as agreeable as possible without
committing herself to return Miss Kimpsey's visit.

"Why, no, Mrs. Bell," Miss Kimpsey said earnestly, with
a protesting buff-and-gray smile, "I didn't mind waiting
a particle--honestly I didn't. Besides, I presume it's
early for a call; but I thought I'd drop in on my way
from school." Miss Kimpsey was determined that Mrs. Bell
should have every excuse that charity could invent for
her. She sat down again, and agreed with Mrs. Bell that
they were having lovely weather, especially when they
remembered what a disagreeable fall it had been last
year; certainly this October had been just about perfect.
The ladies used these superlatives in the tone of mild
defiance that almost any statement of fact has upon
feminine lips in America. It did not seem to matter that
their observations were entirely in union.

"I thought I'd run in--" said Miss Kimpsey, screwing
herself up by the arm of her chair.

"Yes?"

"And speak to you about a thing I've been thinking a good
deal of, Mrs. Bell, this last day or two. It's about
Elfrida."

Mrs. Bell's expression became judicial. If this was a
complaint--and she was not accustomed to complaints of
Elfrida--she would be careful how she took it.

"I hope--" she began.

"Oh, you needn't worry, Mrs. Bell. It's nothing about
her conduct, and it's nothing about her school work."

"Well, that's a relief," said Mrs. Bell, as if she had
expected it would be. "But I know she's bad at figures.
The child can't help that, though; she gets it from me.
I think I ought to ask you to be lenient with her on that
account."

"I have nothing to do with the mathematical branches,
Mrs, Bell. I teach only English to the senior classes.
But I haven't heard Mr. Jackson complain of Elfrida at
all." Feeling that she could no longer keep her errand
at arm's length, Miss Kimpsey desperately closed with
it. "I've come--I hope you won't mind--Mrs. Bell, Elfrida
has been quoting Rousseau in her compositions, and I
thought you'd like to know."

"In the original?" asked Mrs. Bell, with interest. "I
didn't think her French was advanced enough for that."

"No, from a translation," Miss Kimpsey replied. "Her
sentence ran: 'As the gifted Jean Jacques Rousseau told
the world in his "Confessions"'--I forget the rest. That
was the part that struck me most. She had evidently been
reading the works of Rousseau."

"Very likely. Elfrida has her own subscription at the
library," Mrs. Bell said speculatively. "It shows a taste
in reading beyond her years, doesn't it, Miss Kimpsey?
The child is only fifteen."

"Well, _I've_ never read Rousseau," the little teacher
stated definitely. "Isn't he--atheistical, Mrs. Bell,
and improper every way?"

Mrs. Bell raised her eyebrows and pushed out her lips at
the severity of this ignorant condemnation. "He was a
genius, Miss Kimpsey--rather I should say he _is_, for
genius cannot die. He is much thought of in France. People
there make a little shrine of the house he occupied with
Madame Warens, you know."

"Oh!" returned Miss Kimpsey, "_French_ people."

"Yes. The French are peculiarly happy in the way they
sanctify genius," said Mrs. Bell vaguely, with a feeling
that she was wasting a really valuable idea.

"Well, you'll have to excuse me, Mrs. Bell. I'd always
heard you entertained about as liberal views as there
were going on any subject, but I didn't expect they
embraced Rousseau." Miss Kimpsey spoke quite meekly. "I
know we live in an age of progress, but I guess I'm not
as progressive as some."

"Many will stay behind," interrupted Mrs. Bell impartially,
"but many more will advance."

"And I thought maybe Elfrida had been reading that author
without your knowledge or approval, and that perhaps
you'd like to know."

"I neither approve nor disapprove," said Mrs. Bell,
poising her elbow on the table, her chin upon her hand,
and her judgment, as it were, upon her chin. "I think
her mind ought to develop along the lines that nature
intended; I think nature is wiser than I am"--there was
an effect of condescending explanation here--"and I don't
feel justified in interfering. I may be wrong--"

"Oh no!" said Miss Kimpsey.

"But Elfrida's reading has always been very general. She
has a remarkable mind, if you will excuse my saying so;
it devours everything. I can't tell you _when_ she learned
to read, Miss Kimpsey--it seemed to come to her. She has
often reminded me of what you see in the biographies of
distinguished people about their youth. There are really
a great many points of similarity sometimes. I shouldn't
be surprised if Elfrida did anything. I wish _I_ had
had her opportunities!"

"She's growing very good-looking," remarked Miss Kimpsey.

"It's an interesting face," Mrs. Bell returned. "Here
is her last photograph. It's full of soul, I think. She
posed herself," Mrs. Bell added unconsciously.

It was a cabinet photograph of a girl whose eyes looked
definitely out of it, dark, large, well shaded, full of
a desire to be beautiful at once expressed and fulfilled.
The nose was a trifle heavily blocked, but the mouth had
sensitiveness and charm. There was a heaviness in the
chin, too, but the free springing curve of the neck
contradicted that, and the symmetry of the face defied
analysis. It was turned a little to one side, wistfully;
the pose and the expression suited each other perfectly.

"_Full_ of soul!" responded Miss Kimpsey. "She takes
awfully well, doesn't she! It reminds me--it reminds me
of pictures I've seen of Rachel, the actress, really it
does."

"I'm afraid Elfrida has no talent _that_ way." Mrs.
Bell's accent was quite one of regret.

"She seems completely wrapped up in her painting just
now," said Miss Kimpsey, with her eyes still on the
photograph.

"Yes; I often wonder what her career will be, and sometimes
it comes home to me that it must be art. The child can't
help it--she gets it straight from me. But there were no
art classes in my day." Mrs. Bell's tone implied a large
measure of what the world had lost in consequence. "Mr.
Bell doesn't agree with me about Elfrida's being predestined
for art," she went on, smiling; "his whole idea is that
she'll marry like other people."

"Well, if she goes on improving in looks at the rate she
has, you'll find it difficult to _prevent_, I should
think, Mrs. Bell." Miss Kimpsey began to wonder at her
own temerity in staying so long. "Should you be opposed
to it?"

"Oh, I shouldn't be _opposed_ to it exactly. I won't say
I don't expect it. I think she might do better, myself;
but I dare say matrimony will swallow her up as it does
everybody--almost everybody--else." A finer ear than Miss
Kimpsey's might have heard in this that to overcome Mrs.
Bell's objections matrimony must take a very attractive
form indeed, and that she had no doubt it would. Elfrida's
instructress did not hear it; she might have been less
overcome with the quality of these latter-day sentiments
if she had. Little Miss Kimpsey, whom matrimony had not
swallowed up, had risen to go. "Oh, I'm sure the most
gifted couldn't do _better_!" she said, hardily, in
departing, with a blush that turned her from buff-and-gray
to brick color.

Mrs. Bell picked up the _Revue_ after she had gone, and
read three lines of a paper on the climate and the soil
of Poland. Then she laid it down again at the same angle
with the corner of the table which it had described
before.

"Rousseau!" she said aloud to herself. "_C'est un peu
fort mais--_" and paused, probably for maturer reflection
upon the end of her sentence.




CHAPTER II.

"Leslie." said Mrs. Bell, making the unnecessary feminine
twist to get a view of her back hair from the mirror with
a hand-glass, "aren't you _delighted?_ Try to be candid
with yourself now, and own that she's tremendously
improved."

It would not have occurred to anybody but Mrs. Bell to
ask Mr. Leslie Bell to be candid with himself. Candor
was written in large letters all over Mr. Leslie Bell's
plain, broad countenance. So was a certain obstinacy,
not of will, but of adherence to prescribed principles,
which might very well have been the result of living for
twenty years with Mrs. Leslie Bell. Otherwise he was a
thick-set man with an intelligent bald head, a fresh-colored
complexion, and a well-trimmed gray beard. Mr. Leslie
Bell looked at life with logic, or thought he did, and
took it with ease, in a plain way. He was known to be a
good man of business, with a leaning toward generosity,
and much independence of opinion. It was not a custom
among election candidates to ask Leslie Bell for his
vote. It was pretty well understood that nothing would
influence it except his "views," and that none of the
ordinary considerations in use with refractory electors
would influence his views. He was a man of large,
undemonstrative affections, and it was a matter of private
regret with him that there should have been only one
child, and that a daughter, to bestow them upon. His
simplicity of nature was utterly beyond the understanding
of his wife, who had been building one elaborate theory
after another about him ever since they had been married,
conducting herself in mysterious accordance, but had
arrived accurately only at the fact that he preferred
two lumps of sugar in his tea.

Mr. Bell did not allow his attention to be taken from
the intricacies of his toilet by his wife's question
until she repeated it.

"Aren't you charmed with Elfrida, Leslie? Hasn't
Philadelphia improved her beyond your wildest dreams?"

Mr. Bell reflected. "You know I don't think Elfrida has
ever been as pretty as she was when she was five years
old, Maggie."

"_Do_ say Margaret," interposed Mrs. Bell plaintively.
She had been suffering from this for twenty years.

"It's of no use, my dear; I never remember unless there's
company present. I was going to say Elfrida had certainly
grown. She's got to her full size now, I should think,
and she dwarfs you, moth--Margaret."

Mrs. Bell looked at him with tragic eyes. "Do you see no
more in her than _that?_" she exclaimed.

"She looks well, I admit she looks well. She seems to
have got a kind of style in Philadelphia."

"_Style!_"

"I don't mean fashionable style--a style of her own; and
according to the professors, neither the time nor the
money has been wasted. But she's been a long year away,
Maggie. It's been considerably dull without her for you
and me. I hope she won't take it into her head to want
to leave home again."

"If it should be necessary to her plan of life--"

"It won't be necessary. She's nineteen now, and I'd like
to see her settle down here in Sparta, and the sooner
the better. Her painting will be an interest for her all
her life, and if ever she should be badly off she can
teach. That was my idea in giving her the training."

"Settle down in _Sparta!_" Mrs. Bell repeated, with a
significant curve of her superior lip. "Why, who is
there--"

"Lots of people, though it isn't for me to name them,
nor for you either, my dear. But speaking generally,
there isn't a town of its size in the Union with a finer
crop of go-ahead young men in it than Sparta."

Mrs. Bell was leaning against the inside shutter of their
bedroom window, looking out, while she waited for her
husband. As she looked, one of Sparta's go-ahead young
men, glancing up as he passed in the street below and
seeing her there behind the panes, raised his hat.

"Heavens, _no!_" said Mrs. Bell. "You don't understand,
Leslie."

"Perhaps not," Mr. Bell returned. "We must get that
packing-case opened after dinner. I'm anxious to see the
pictures." Mr. Bell put the finishing touches to his
little finger-nail and briskly pocketed his penknife.
"Shall we go downstairs now?" he suggested. "Fix your
brooch, mother; it's just on the drop."

Elfrida Bell had been a long year away--a year that seemed
longer to her than it possibly could to anybody in Sparta,
as she privately reflected when her father made this
observation for the second and the third time. Sparta
accounted for its days chiefly in ledgers, the girl
thought; there was a rising and a going down of the sun,
a little eating and drinking and speedy sleeping, a little
discussion of the newspapers. Sparta got over its days
by strides and stretches, and the strides and stretches
seemed afterward to have been made over gaps and gulfs
full of emptiness. The year divided itself and got its
painted leaves, its white silences, its rounding buds,
and its warm fragrances from the winds of heaven, and so
there were four seasons in Sparta, and people talked of
an early spring or a late fall; but Elfrida told herself
that time had no other division, and the days no other
color. Elfrida seemed to be unaware of the opening of
the new South Ward Episcopal Methodist Church. She
overlooked the municipal elections too, the plan for
overhauling the town waterworks, and the reorganization
of the public library. She even forgot the Browning Club.

Whereas--though Elfrida would never have said "whereas"
--the days in Philadelphia had been long and full. She
had often lived a week in one of them, and there had been
hours that stretched themselves over an infinity of life
and feeling, as Elfrida saw it, looking back. In reality,
her experience had been usual enough and poor enough;
but it had fed her in a way, and she enriched it with
her imagination, and thought, with keen and sincere pity,
that she had been starved till then. The question that
preoccupied her when she moved out of the Philadelphia
station in the Chicago train was that of future sustenance.
It was under the surface of her thoughts when she kissed
her father and mother and was made welcome home; it raised
a mute remonstrance against Mr. Bell's cheerful prophecy
that she would be content to stay in Sparta for a while
now, and get to know the young society; it neutralized
the pleasure of the triumphs in the packing-box. Besides,
their real delight had all been exhaled at the students'
exhibition in Philadelphia, when Philadelphia looked at
them. The opinion of Sparta, Elfrida thought, was not a
matter for anxiety. Sparta would be pleased in advance.

Elfrida allowed one extenuating point in her indictment
of Sparta: the place had produced her as she was at
eighteen, when they sent her to Philadelphia. This was
only half conscious--she was able to formulate it later
--but it influenced her sincere and vigorous disdain of
the town correctively, and we may believe that it operated
to except her father and mother from the general wreck
of her opinion to a greater extent than any more ordinary
feeling did. It was not in the least a sentiment of
affection for her birthplace; if she could have chosen
she would very much have preferred to be born somewhere
else. It was simply an important qualifying circumstance.
Her actual and her ideal self, her most mysterious and
interesting self, had originated in the air and the
opportunities of Sparta. Sparta had even done her the
service of showing her that she was unusual, by contrast,
and Elfrida felt that she ought to be thankful to somebody
or something for being as unusual as she was. She had
had a comfortable, spoiled feeling of gratitude for it
before she went to Philadelphia, which had developed in
the meantime into a shudder at the mere thought of what
it meant to be an ordinary person. "I could bear not to
be charming," said she sometimes to her Philadelphia
looking-glass, "but I could _not_ bear not to be clever."

She said "clever," but she meant more than that. Elfrida
Bell believed that something other than cleverness entered
into her personal equation. She looked sometimes into
her very soul to see what, but the writing there was in
strange characters that faded under her eyes, leaving
her uncomprehending but tranced. Meanwhile art spoke to
her from all sides, finding her responsive and more
responsive. Some books, some pictures, some music brought
her a curious exalted sense of double life. She could
not talk about it at all, but she could slip out into
the wet streets on a gusty October evening, and walk
miles exulting in it, and in the light on the puddles
and in the rain on her face, coming back, it must be
admitted, with red cheeks and an excellent appetite. It
led her into strange absent silences and ways of liking
to be alone, which gratified her mother and worried her
father. When Elfrida burned the gas of Sparta late in
her own room, it was always her father who saw the light
under the door, and who came and knocked and told her
that it was after eleven, and high time she was in bed.
Mrs. Bell usually protested. "How can the child reach
any true development," she asked, "if you interfere with
her like this?" to which Mr. Bell usually replied that
whatever she developed, he didn't want it to be headaches
and hysteria. Elfrida invariably answered, "Yes, papa,"
with complete docility; but it must be said that Mr. Bell
generally knocked in vain, and the more perfect the
submission of the daughterly reply the later the gas
would be apt to burn. Elfrida was always agreeable to
her father. So far as she thought of it she was
appreciatively fond of him, but the relation pleased her,
it was one that could be so charmingly sustained. For
already out of the other world she walked in--the world
of strange kinships and insights and recognitions, where
she saw truth afar off and worshipped, and as often met
falsehood in the way and turned raptly to follow--the
girl had drawn a vague and many-shaped idea of artistic
living which embraced the filial attitude among others
less explicable. It gave her pleasure to do certain things
in certain ways. She stood and sat and spoke, and even
thought, at times, with a subtle approval and enjoyment
of her manner of doing it. It was not actual artistic
achievement, but it was the sort of thing that entered
her imagination, as such achievement's natural corollary.
Her self-consciousness was a supreme fact of her
personality; it began earlier than any date she could
remember, and it was a channel of the most unfailing and
intense satisfaction to her from many sources. One was
her beauty, for she had developed an elusive beauty that
served her moods. When she was dull she called herself
ugly--unfairly, though her face lost tremendously in
value then--and her general dislike of dullness and
ugliness became particular and acute in connection with
herself. It is not too much to say that she took a keen
enjoying pleasure in the flush upon her own cheek and
the light in her own eyes no less than in the inward
sparkle that provoked it--an honest delight, she would
not have minded confessing it. Her height, her symmetry,
her perfect abounding health were separate joys to her;
she found absorbing and critical interest in the very
figment of her being. It was entirely preposterous that
a young woman should kneel at an attic window in a flood
of spring moonlight, with, her hair about the shoulders
of her nightgown, repeating Rossetti to the wakeful
budding garden, especially as it was for herself she did
it--nobody else saw her. She knelt there partly because
of a vague desire to taste the essence of the spring and
the garden and Rossetti at once, and partly because she
felt the romance of the foolish situation. She knew of
the shadow her hair made around her throat, and that her
eyes were glorious in the moonlight. Going back to bed,
she paused before the looking-glass and wafted a kiss,
as she blew the candle out, to the face she saw there.
It was such a pretty face, and so full of tire spirit
of. Rossetti and the moonlight, that she couldn't help
it. Then she slept, dreamlessly, comfortably, and late;
and in the morning she had never taken cold.

Philadelphia had pointed and sharpened all this. The
girl's training there had vitalized her brooding dreams
of producing what she worshipped, had given shape and
direction to her informal efforts, had concentrated them
upon charcoal and canvas. There was an enthusiasm for
work in the Institute, a canonization of names, a blazing
desire to imitate that tried hard to fan itself into
originality. Elfrida kindled at once, and felt that her
soul had lodged forever In her fingers, that art had
found for her, once for all, a sacred embodiment. She
spoke with subdued feeling of its other shapes; she was
at all points sympathetic; but she was no longer at all
points desirous. Her aim was taken. She would not write
novels or compose operas; she would paint. There was some
renunciation in it and some humility. The day she came
home, looking over a dainty sandalwood box full of early
verses, twice locked against her mother's eye, "The desire
of the moth for the star," she said to herself; but she
did not tear them up. That would have been brutal.

Elfrida wanted to put off opening the case that held her
year's work until next day. She quailed somewhat in
anticipation of her parents' criticisms as a matter of
fact; she would have preferred to postpone parrying them.
She acknowledged this to herself with a little irritation
that it should be so, but when her father insisted, chisel
in hand, she went down on her knees with charming
willingness to help him. Mrs. Bell took a seat on the
sofa and clasped her hands with the expression of one
who prepares for prayer.

One by one Mr. Leslie Bell drew out his daughter's studies
and copies, cutting their strings, clearing them of their
paper wrappings, and standing each separately against
the wall in his crisp, business-like way. They were all
mounted and framed; they stood very well against the
wall; but Mr. Bell, who began hopefully, was presently
obliged to try to hide his disappointment, the row was
so persistently black and white. Mrs. Bell, on the sofa,
had the look of postponing her devotions.

"You seem to have done a great many of these--etchings,"
said Mr. Bell.

"Oh, papa! They're not etchings, they're subjects in
charcoal--from casts and things."

"They do you credit--I've no doubt they do you credit.
They're very nicely drawn," returned her father, "but
they're a good deal alike. We wont be able to hang more
than two of them in the same room. Was _that_ what they
gave you the medal for?"

Mr. Bell indicated a drawing of Psyche. The lines were
delicate, expressive, and false; the relief was imperfect,
yet the feeling was undeniably caught. As a drawing it
was incorrect enough, but its charm lay in a subtle
spiritual something that bad worked into it from the
girl's own fingers, and made the beautiful empty classic
face modernly interesting. In view of its inaccuracy the
committee had been guilty of a most irregular proceeding
in recognizing it with a medal; but in a very young art
school this might be condoned.

"It's a perfectly lovely thing," interposed Mrs. Bell
from the sofa. "I'm sure it deserves one."

Elfrida said nothing. The study was ticketed, it had
obviously won a medal.

Mr. Bell looked at it critically. "Yes, it's certainly
well done. In spite of the frame--I wouldn't give ten
cents for the frame--the effect is fine. We most find a
good light for that. Oh, now we come to the oil-paintings.
We both presumed you would do well at the oil-paintings;
and for my part," continued Mr. Bell definitely, "I like
them best. There's more variety in them." He was holding
at arm's-length, as he spoke, an oblong scrap of filmy
blue sky and marshy green fields in a preposterously
wide, flat, dull gold frame, and looking at it in a
puzzled way. Presently he reversed it and looked again.

"No, papa," Elfrida said, "you had it right side up
before." She was biting her lip, and struggling with a
desire to pile them all back into the box and shut the
lid and stamp on it.

"That's exquisite!" murmured Mrs. Bell, when Mr. Bell
had righted it again.

"It's one of the worst," said Elfrida briefly. Mr. Bell
looked relieved. "Since that's your own opinion, Elfrida,"
he said, "I don't mind saying that I don't care much
about it either. It looks as if you'd got tired of it
before you finished it."

"Does it?" Elfrida said.

"Now this is a much better thing, in my opinion," her
father went on, standing the picture of an old woman
behind an apple-stall along the wall with the rest "I
don't pretend to be a judge, but I know what I like, and
I like that. It explains itself."

"It's a lovely bit of color," remarked Mrs. Bell.

Elfrida smiled. "Thank you, mamma," she said, and kissed
her.

When the box was exhausted, Mr. Bell walked up and down
for a few minutes in front of the row against the wall,
with his hands in his pockets, reflecting, while Mrs.
Bell discovered new beauties to the author of them.

"We'll hang this lot in the dining-room," he said at
length, "and those black-and-whites with the oak mountings
in the parlor. They'll go best with the wall-paper there."

"Yes, papa."

"And I hope you won't mind, Elfrida," he added, "but I've
promised that they shall have one of your paintings to
raffle off in the bazar for the alterations in the
Sunday-school next week."

"Oh no, papa. I shall be delighted."

Elfrida was sitting beside her mother on the sofa, and
at the dose of this proposition Mr. Bell came and sat
there too. There was a silence for a moment while they
all three confronted the line of pictures leaning against
the wall Then Elfrida began to laugh, and she went on
laughing, to the astonishment of her parents, until the
tears came into her eyes. She stopped as suddenly, kissed
her mother and father, and went upstairs. "I'm afraid
you've hurt Her feelings, Leslie," said Mrs. Bell, when
she had well gone.

But Elfrida's feelings had not been hurt, though one
might say that the evening left her sense of humor rather
sore. At that moment she was dallying with the temptation
to describe the whole scene in a letter to a valued friend
in Philadelphia, who would have appreciated it with mirth.
In the end she did not write. It would have been too
humiliating.




CHAPTER III.

"_Pas mal, parbleu!_" Lucien remarked, with pursed-out
lips, running his fingers through his shock of coarse
hair, and reflectively scratching the top of his big head
as he stepped closer to Nadie Palicsky's elbow, where
she stood at her easel in his crowded atelier. The girl
turned and looked keenly into his face, seeking his eyes,
which were on her work with a considering, interested
look. Satisfied, she sent a glance of joyous triumph at
a somewhat older woman, whose place was next, and who
was listening with the amiable effacement of countenance
that is sometimes a more or less successful disguise for
chagrin. On this occasion it seemed to fail, for
Mademoiselle Palicsky turned her attention to Lucien and
her work again with a slight raising of the eyebrows and
a slighter sigh. Her face assumed a gentle melancholy,
as if she were pained at the exhibition of a weakness of
her sex; yet it was unnecessary to be an acute observer
to read there the hope that Lucien's significant phrase
had not by any chance escaped her neighbor.

"The drawing of the neck," Lucien went on, "is excellently
brutal." Nadie wished he would speak a little louder,
but Lucien always arranged the carrying power of his
voice according to the susceptibilities of the atelier.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and still stood
beside her, looking at her study of the nude model who
posed upon a table in the midst of the students. "In you,
mademoiselle," he added in a tone yet lower, "I find the
woman and the artist divorced. That is a vast advantage--an
immense source of power. I am growing more certain of
you; you are not merely cleverly eccentric as I thought.
You have a great deal that no one can teach you. You have
finished that--I wish to take it downstairs to show the
men. It will not be jeered at, I promise you."

"_Cher maitre!_ You mean it?"

"But certainly!"

The girl handed him the study with a look of almost
doglike gratitude in her narrow gray eyes. Lucien had
never said so much to her before, though the whole atelier
had noticed how often he had been coming to her easel
lately, and had disparaged her in corners accordingly.
She looked at the tiny silver watch she wore in a leather
strap on her left wrist--he had spent nearly five minutes
with her this time, watching her work and talking to her,
in itself a triumph. It was almost four o'clock, and the
winter daylight was going; presently they would all stop
work. Partly for the pleasure of being chaffed and envied
and complimented in the anteroom in the general washing
of brushes, and partly to watch Lucien's rapid progress
among the remaining easels, Mademoiselle Palicsky
deliberately sat down, in a prematurely vacant chair,
slung one slender little limb over the other, and waited.
As she sat there a generous thought rose above her
exultation. She hoped everybody else in the atelier had
guessed what Lucien was saying to her all that while,
and had seen him carry off her day's work, but not the
little American. The little American, who was at least
thirteen inches taller than Mademoiselle Palicsky, was
sufficiently discouraged already, and it was pathetic,
in view of almost a year of failure, to see how she clung
to her ghost of a talent Besides, the little American
admired Nadie Palicsky, her friend, her comrade, quite
enough already.

Elfrida had heard, nevertheless. She listened eagerly,
tensely, as she always did when Lucien opened his lips
in her neighborhood. When she saw him take the sketch to
show in the men's atelier downstairs, to exhibit to that
horde of animals below, whose studies and sketches and
compositions were so constantly brought up for the stimulus
and instruction of Lucien's women students, she grew
suddenly so white that the girl who worked next her, a
straw-colored Swede, asked her if she were ill, and
offered her a little green bottle of salts of lavender.
"It's that beast of a calorifere," the Swede said, nodding
at the hideous black cylinder that stood near them,
"they will always make it too hot."

Elfrida waved the salts back hastily--Lucien was coming
her way. She worked seated, and as he seemed on the point
of passing with merely a casual glance and an ambiguous
"H'm!" she started up. The movement effectually arrested
him, unintentional though it seemed. He frowned slightly,
thrusting his hands deep into his coat-pockets, and looked
again.

"We must find a better place for you, mademoiselle; you
can make nothing of it here so close to the model, and
below him thus." He would have gone on, but in spite of
his intention to avert his eyes he caught the girl's
glance, and something infinitely appealing in it stayed
him again. "Mademoiselle," he said, with visible irritation,
"there is nothing to say that I have not said many times
already. Your drawing is still ladylike, your color is
still pretty, and, _sapristi!_ you have worked with me
a year! Still," he added, recollecting himself--Lucien
never lost a student by over-candor--"considering your
difficult place the shoulders are not so bad. _Continuez_,
mademoiselle."

The girl's eyes were fastened immovably upon her work as
she sat down again, painting rapidly in an ineffectual,
meaningless way, with the merest touch of color in her
brush. Her face glowed with the deepest shame that had
ever visited her. Lucien was scolding the Swede roundly;
she had disappointed him, he said. Elfrida felt heavily
how impossible it was that _she_ should disappoint him.
And they had all heard--the English girl in the South
Kensington gown, the rich New Yorker, Nadie's rival the
Roumanian, Nadie herself; and they were all, except the
last, working more vigorously for hearing. Nadie had
turned her head away, and so far as the back of a neck
and the tips of two ears could express oblivion of what
had passed, it might have been gathered from hers. But
Elfrida knew better, and she resented the pity of the
pretence more than if she had met Mademoiselle Palicsky's
long light gray eyes full of derisive laughter.

For a year she had been in it and of it, that intoxicating
life of the Quartier Latin: so much in it that she had
gladly forgotten any former one; so much of it that it
had become treason to believe existence supportable under
any other conditions. It was her pride that she had felt
everything from the beginning; her instinctive apprehension
of all that is to be apprehended in the passionate,
fantastic, vivid life on the left side of the Seine had
been a conscious joy from the day she had taken her tiny
appartement in the Rue Porte Royale, and bought her colors
and sketching-block from a dwarf-like little dealer in
the next street, who assured her proudly that he supplied
Henner and Dagnan-Bouveret, and moreover knew precisely
what she wanted from experience. "_Moi aussi, mademoiselle,
je suis artist!_" She had learned nothing, she had absorbed
everything. It seemed to her that she had entered into
her inheritance, and that in the possessions that throng
the Quartier Latin she was born to be rich. In thinking
this she had an Overpowering realization of the poverty
of Sparta, so convincing that she found it unnecessary
to tell herself that she would never go back there. That
was the unconscious pivotal supposition in everything
she thought or said or did. After the first bewildering
day or two when the exquisite thrill of Paris captured
her indefinitely, she felt the full tide of her life turn
and flow steadily in a new direction with a delight of
revelation and an ecstasy of promise that made nothing
in its sweep of every emotion that had not its birth and
growth in art, and forbade the mere consideration of
anything that might be an obstacle, as if it were a sin.
She entered her new world with proud recognition of its
unwritten laws, its unsanctified morale, its riotous
overflowing ideals; and she was instant in gathering that
to see, to comprehend these was to be thrice blessed, as
not to see, not to comprehend them was to dwell in outer
darkness with the bourgeois, and the "sandpaper" artists,
and others who are without hope. It gave her moments of
pure delight to reflect how little "the people" suspected
the reality of the existence of such a world notwithstanding
all they read and all they professed, and how absolutely
exclusive it was in the very nature of nature; how it
had its own language untranslatable, its own creed
unbelievable, its own customs unfathomable by outsiders,
and yet among the true-born how divinely simple recognition
was. Her allegiance had the loyalty of every fibre of
her being; her scorn of the world she had left was too
honest to permit any posing in that regard. The life at
Sparta assumed the colors and very much the significance
depicted on a bit of faded tapestry; when she thought of
it, it was to groan that so many of her young impressionable
years had been wasted there. She hoarded her years, now
that every day and every hour was suffused with its
individual pleasure or interest, or that keen artistic
pain which also had its value, as a sensation, in the
Quartier Latin. It distressed her to think that she was
almost twenty-one.

The interminable year that intervened between Elfrida's
return from Philadelphia and her triumph in the matter
of being allowed to go to Paris to study, she had devoted
mainly to the society of the Swiss governess in the Sparta
Seminary for young ladies--Methodist Episcopal--with the
successful object of getting a working knowledge of
French. There had been a certain amount of "young society"
too, and one or two incipient love-affairs, watched with
anxious interest by her father and with a harrowed
conscience by her mother, who knew Elfrida's capacity
for amusing herself; and unlimited opportunities had
occurred for the tacit exhibition of her superiority to
Sparta, of which she had not always taken advantage. But
the significance of the year gathered into the French
lessons; it was by virtue of these that the time had a
place in her memory. Mademoiselle Joubert supplemented
her instruction with a violent affection, a great deal
of her society, and the most entertainingly modern of
the French novels, which Brentano sent her monthly in
enticing packets, her single indulgence. So that after
the first confusion of a multitude of tongues in the
irrelevant Parisian key Elfrida found herself reasonably
fluent and fairly at ease. The illumined jargon of the
atelier staid with her naturally; she never forgot a word
or a phrase, and in two months she was babbling and
mocking with the rest.

She lived alone; she learned readily to do it on eighty
francs a month, and her appartement became charming in
three weeks. She divined what she should have there, and
she managed to get extraordinary bargains in mystery and
history out of the dealers in such things, so cracked
and so rusty, so moth-eaten and of such excellent color,
that the escape of the combined effect from _banalite_
was a marvel. She had a short, sharp struggle with her
American taste for simple elegance in dress, and overthrew
it, aiming, with some success, at originality instead.
She found it easy in Paris to invest her striking
personality in a distinctive costume, sufficiently becoming
and sufficiently odd, of which a broad soft felt hat,
which made a delightful brigand of her, and a Hungarian
cloak formed important features. The Hungarian cloak
suited her so extremely well that artistic considerations
compelled her to wear it occasionally, I fear, when other
people would have found it uncomfortably warm. In nothing
that she said or did or admired or condemned was there
any trace of the commonplace, except, perhaps, the desire
to avoid it; it had become her conviction that she owed
this to herself. She was thoroughly popular in the atelier,
her _petits soupers_ were so good, her enthusiasms so
generous, her drawing so bad. The other pupils declared
that she had a head _divinement tragique_, and for those
of them she liked she sometimes posed, filling impressive
parts in their weekly compositions. They all knew the
little appartement in the Rue Porte Royale, more or less
well according to the favor with which they were received.
Nadie Palicsky perhaps knew it best--Nadie Palicsky and
her friend Monsieur Andre Vambery, who always accompanied
her when, she came to Elfrida's in the evening, finding
it impossible to allow her to be out alone at night,
which Nadie confessed agreeable to her vanity, but a bore.

Elfrida found it difficult in the beginning to admire
the friend. He was too small for dignity, and Nadie's
inspired comparison of his long black hair to "_serpents
noirs_" left her unimpressed. Moreover she thought she
detected about him a personal odor which was neither that
of sanctity nor any other abstraction. It took time and
conversation and some acquaintance with values as they
obtain at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and the knowledge of
what it meant to be "selling," to lift Monsieur Vambery
to his proper place in her regard. After that she blushed
that he had ever held any other. But from the first
Elfrida had been conscious of a kind of pride in her
unshrinking acceptance of the situation. She and Nadie
had exchanged a pledge of some sort, when Mademoiselle
Palicsky bethought herself of the unconfessed fact. She
gave Elfrida a narrow look, and then leaned back in her
low chair and bent an imperturbable gaze upon the slender
spiral of blue smoke that rose from the end of her
cigarette.

"It is necessary now that you should know, petite--nobody
else does, Lucien would be sure to make a fuss, but--I
have a lover, and we have decided about marriage that it
is ridiculous. It is a _brave ame_. You ought to know
him; but if it makes any difference--"

Elfrida reflected afterward with satisfaction that she
had not even changed color, though she had found the
communication electric. It seemed to her that there had
been something dignified, noble almost, in the answer
she had made, with a smile that acknowledged the fact
that the world had scruples on such accounts as these:

"_Cela m'est absolument egal!_"

So far as the life went it was perfect. The Quartier
spoke and her soul answered it, and the world had nothing
to compare with a conversation like that. But the question
of production, of achievement, was beginning to bring
her moments when she had a terrible sensation that the
temperature of her passion was chilled. She had not yet
seen despair, but she had now and then lost her hold of
herself, and she had made acquaintance with fear. There
had been no vivid realization of failure, but a problem
was beginning to form in her mind, and with it a distinct
terror of the solution, which sometimes found a shape in
her dreams. In waking, voluntary moments she would see
her problem only as an unanswerable enigma.

Yet in the beginning she had felt a splendid confidence.
Her appropriation of theory had been so brilliant and so
rapid, her instructive appreciation had helped itself
out so well with the casual formulas of the schools, she
seemed to herself to have an absolute understanding of
expression. She held her social place among the others
by her power of perception, and that, with the completeness
of her repudiation of the bourgeois, had given her Nadie
Palicsky, whom the rest found difficult, variable,
unreasonable. Elfrida was certain that if she might only
talk to Lucien she could persuade him of a great deal
about her talent that escaped him--she was sore it escaped
him--in the mere examination of her work. It chafed her
always that her personality could not touch the master;
that she must day after day be only the dumb, submissive
pupil. She felt sometimes that there were things she
might say to Lucien which would be interesting and valuable
for him to hear.

Lucien was always non-committal for the first few months.
Everybody said so, and it was natural enough. Elfrida
set her teeth against his silences, his casual looks and
ambiguous encouragements for a length of time which did
infinite credit to her determination. She felt herself
capable of an eternity of pain; she was proudly conscious
of a willingness to oppose herself to innumerable
discouragements--to back her talent, as it were, against
all odds. That was historic, dignified, to be expected!
But in the inmost privacy of her soul she had conceived
the character of the obstacles she was prepared to face,
and the list resolutely excluded any idea that it might
not be worth while. Indifference and contempt cut at the
very roots of her pledges to herself. As she sat listening
on this afternoon to the vivid terms of Lucien's disapproval
of what the Swede had done, she had a sharp consciousness
of this severance.

She had nothing to say to any one in the general babble
of the anteroom, and nobody notified her white face and
resolute eyes particularly--the Americans were always
so pale and so _exalte_. Nadie kept away from her.
Elfrida had to cross the room and bring her, with a little
touch of angry assertion upon the arm, from the middle
of the group she had drawn around her, on purpose, as
her friend knew.

"I want you to dine with me--really _dine_," she said,
and her voice was both eager and repressed. "We win go
to Babaudin's--one gets an excellent haricot there--and
you shall have that little white cheese that you love.
Come! I want you particularly. I will even make him
bring champagne--anything."

Nadie gave her a quick look and made a little theatrical
gesture of delight.

"_Quell bonheur!_" she cried for the benefit of the
others; and then in a lower tone: "But not Babaudins,
petite. Andre will not permit Babaudin's; he says it is
not _convenable_," and she threw up her eyes with mock
resignation. "Say Papaud's. They keep their feet off the
table at Papaud's--there are fewer of those _betes des
Anglais_."

"Papaud's is cheaper," Elfrida returned darkly. "The
few Englishmen who dine at Babaudin's behave perfectly
well. I will not be insulted about the cost. I'll be
answerable to Andre. You don't lie as a general thing,
and why now? I can afford it, truly. You need not be
distressed."

Mademoiselle Palicsky looked into the girl's tense face
for an instant, and laughed a gay assent. But to herself
she said, as she finished drying her brushes on an
inconceivably dirty bit of cotton: "She has found herself
out, she has come to the truth. She has discovered that
it is not in her, and she is coming to me for corroboration.
Well, I will not give it, me! It is extremely disagreeable,
and I have not the courage. _Pourquoi donc!_ I will send
her to Monsieur John Kendal; she may make him responsible.
He will break her, but he will not lie to her; they
sacrifice all to their consciences, those English! And
now, you good-natured fool, you are in for a devil of an
evening!"




CHAPTER IV.

"Three months more," Elfrida Bell said to herself next
morning, in the act of boiling an egg over a tiny kerosene
stove in the cupboard that served her as a kitchen, "and
I will put it to every test I know. Three unflinching
months! John Kendal will not have gone back to England
by that time. I shall still get his opinion. If he is
only as encouraging as Nadie was last night, dear thing!
I almost forgave her for being so much, much cleverer
than I am. Oh, letters!" as a heavy knock repeated itself
upon the door of the room outside.

There was only one; it was thrust beneath the door,
showing a white triangle to her expectancy as she ran
out to secure it, while the fourth flight creaked under
Madame Vamousin descending. She picked it up with a light
heart--she was young and she had slept. Yesterday's strain
had passed; she was ready to count yesterday's experience
among the things that must be met. Nadie had been so
sensible about it. This was a letter from home, and the
American mail was not due until next day. Inside there
would be news of a little pleasure trip to New York,
which her father and mother had been planning lately
--Elfrida constantly urged upon her parents the necessity
of amusing themselves--and a remittance. The remittance
would be more than usually welcome, for she was a little
in debt--a mere trifle, fifty or sixty francs; but Elfrida
hated being in debt. She tore the end of the envelope
across with absolute satisfaction, which was only half
chilled when she opened out each of the four closely
written sheets of foreign letter-paper in turn and saw
that the usual postal order was not there.

Having ascertained this however, she went back to her
egg; in another ten seconds it would have been hard-boiled,
a thing she detested. There was the, egg, and there was
some apricot-jam--the egg in a slender-stemmed Arabian
silver cup, the jam golden in a little round dish of
wonderful old blue. She set it forth, with the milk-bread
and the butter and the coffee, on a bit of much mended
damask with a pattern of rosebuds and a coronet in one
corner. Her breakfast gave her several sorts of pleasure.

Half an hour after it was over she was still sitting with
the letter in her lap. It is possible to imagine that
she looked ugly. Her dark eyes had a look of persistence
in spite of fear, a line or two shot up from between her
brows, her lips were pursed a little and drawn down at
the corners, her chin thrust forward. Her face and her
attitude helped each other to express the distinctest
possible negative. Her neck had an obstinate bend; she
leaned forward clasping her knees, for the moment a
creature of rigid straight lines. She had hardly moved
since she read the letter.

She was sorry to learn that her father had been unfortunate
in business, that the Illinois Indubitable Insurance
Company had failed. At his age the blow would be severe,
and the prospect, after a life of comparative luxury, of
subsisting even in Sparta on eight hundred dollars a year
could not be an inviting one for either of her parents.
When she thought of their giving up the white brick house
in Columbia Avenue and going to live in Cox Street,
Elfrida was thoroughly grieved. She felt the sincerest
gratitude, however, that the misfortune had not come
sooner, before she had learned the true significance of
living, while yet it might have placed her in a state of
blind irresolution which would probably have lasted
indefinitely. After a year in Paris she was able to make
up her mind, and this she could not congratulate herself
upon sufficiently, since a decision at the moment was of
such vital importance! For one point upon which Mrs.
Leslie's letter insisted, regretfully but strongly, was
that the next remittance, which they hoped to be able to
send in a week or two, would necessarily be the last. It
would be as large as they could make it; at all events
it would amply cover her passage and railway expenses to
Sparta, and of course she would sail as soon as it reached
her. It was an elaborate letter, written in phrases which
Mrs. Leslie thought she evolved, but probably remembered
from a long and comprehensive course of fiction as
appropriate to the occasion, and Elfrida read between
the lines with some impatience how largely their trouble
was softened to her mother by the consideration that it
would inevitably bring her back to them. "We can bear it
well if we bear it together," wrote Mrs. Bell. "You have
always been our brave daughter, and your young courage
will be invaluable to us now. Your talents will be our
flowers by the way-side. We shall take the keenest possible
delight in watching them expand, as, even under the cloud
of financial adversity, we know they will."

"Dear over-confident parent," Elfrida reflected grimly
at this point, "I must yet prove that I have any."

Along with the situation she studied elaborately the
third page of the _Sparta Sentinel_. When it had arrived,
months before, containing the best part of a long letter
describing Paris, which she had written to her mother in
the first freshness of her delighted impressions, she
had glanced over it with half-amused annoyance at the
foolish parental pride that suggested printing it. She
was already too remote from the life of Sparta to care
very much one way or another, but such feeling as she
had was of that sort. And the compliments from the
minister, from various members of the Browning Club, from
the editor himself, that filtered through her mother's
letters during the next two or three weeks, made her
shrug with their absolute irrelevance to the only praise
that could thrill her and the only purpose she held dear.
Even now, when the printed lines contained the significance
of a possible resource, she did not give so much as a
thought to the flattering opinion of Sparta as her mother
had conveyed it to her. She read them over and over,
relying desperately on her own critical sense and her
knowledge of what the Paris correspondent of the _Daily
Dial_ thought of her chances in that direction. He, Frank
Parke, had told her once that if her brush failed she
had only to try her pen, though he made use of no such
commonplace as that. He said it, too, at the end of half
an hour's talk with her, only half an hour. Elfrida,
when she wished to be exact with her vanity, told herself
that it could not have been more than twenty-five minutes.
She wished for particular reasons to be exact with it
now, and she did not fail to give proper weight to the
fact that Frank Parke had never seen her before that day.
The Paris correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ was well
enough known to be of the _monde_, and rich enough to be
as bourgeois as anybody. Therefore some of the people
who knew him thought it odd that at his age this gentleman
should prefer the indelicacies of the Quartier to those
of "tout Paris," and the bad vermouth and cheap cigars
of the Rue Luxembourg to the peculiarly excellent quality
of champagne with which the president's wife made her
social atonement to the Faubourg St. Germain. But it was
so, and its being so rendered Frank Parke's opinion that
Miss Bell could write if she chose to try, not only
supremely valuable to her, but available for the second
time if necessary, which was perhaps more important.

There would be a little more money from Sparta, perhaps
one hundred and fifty dollars. It would come in a week,
and after that there would be none. But a supply of it,
however modest, must be arranged somehow--there were the
"frais" of the atelier, to speak of nothing else. The
necessity was irritatingly absolute. Elfrida wished that
her scruples were not so acute about arranging it by
writing for the press. "If I could think for a moment
that I had any right to it as a means of expression!"
she reflected. "But I haven't. It is an art for others.
And it _is_ an art, as sacred as mine. I have no business
to degrade it to my uses." Her mental position when she
went to see Frank Parke was a cynical compromise with
her artistic conscience, of which she nevertheless
sincerely regretted the necessity.

The correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ had a club for one
side of the river and a cafe for the other. He dined
oftenest at the cafe, and Elfrida's card, with "urgent"
inscribed in pencil on it, was brought to him that evening
as he was finishing his coffee. She had no difficulty
in getting it taken in. Mr. Parke's theory was that a
newspaper man gained more than he lost by accessibility.
He came out immediately, furtively returning a toothpick
to his waistcoat pocket--a bald, stout gentleman of middle
age, dressed in loose gray clothes, with shrewd eyes, a
nose which his benevolence just saved from being hawk-like,
a bristling white mustache, and a pink double chin. It
rather pleased Frank Parke, who was born in Hammersmith,
to be so constantly taken for an American--presumably a
New Yorker.

"Monsieur--" began Elfrida a little formally. She would
not have gone on in French, but it was her way to use
this form with the men she knew in Paris, irrespective
of their nationality, just as she invariably addressed
letters which were to be delivered in Sparta, Illinois,
"a madame Leslie Bell, Avenue Columbia," of that
municipality.

"Miss Elfrida, I am delighted to see you," he interrupted
her, stretching out one hand and looking at his watch
with the other. "I am fortunate in having fifteen whole
minutes to put at your disposal At the end of that time
I have an appointment with a cabinet minister, who would
rather see the devil. So I most be punctual. Shall we
walk a bit along these dear boulevards, or shall I get
a fiacre? No? You're quite right--Paris was made for
eternal walking. Now, what is it, my dear child?"

Mr. Parke had already concluded that it was money, and
had fixed the amount he would lend. It was just half of
what Mademoiselle Knike, of Paolo Rossi's, had succeeded
in extracting from him last week. He liked having a
reputation for amiability among the ateliers, but he must
not let it cost too much.

Elfrida felt none of that benumbing shame which sometimes
seizes those who would try literature confessing to those
who have succeeded in it, and the occasion was too
important for the decorative diffidence that might have
occurred to her if it had been trivial. She had herself
well gathered together, and she would have been concise
and direct even if there had been more than fifteen
minutes.

"One afternoon last September, at Nadie Palicsky's--there
is no chance that you will remember, but I assure you it
is so--you told me that I might, if I tried--write,
monsieur."

The concentration of her purpose in her voice made itself
felt where Frank Parke kept his acuter perceptions, and
put them at her service.

"I remember perfectly," he said.

"_Je m'en felicite_. It is more than I expected. Well,
circumstances have made it so that I must either write
or scrub. Scrubbing spoils one's hands, and besides, it
isn't sufficiently remunerative. So I have come to ask
you whether you seriously thought so, or whether it was
only politeness--_blague_--or what? I know it is horrible
of me to insist like, this, but you see I must." Her big
dark eyed looked at him without a shadow of appeal, rather
as if he were destiny and she were unafraid.

"Oh, I meant it," he returned ponderingly. "You can often
tell by the way people talk that they would write well.
But there are many things to be considered, you know."

"Oh, I know--whether one has any real right to write,
anything to say that makes it worth while. I'm afraid
I can't find that I have. But there must be scullery-maid's
work in literature--in journalism, isn't there? I could
do that, I thought. After all, it's only one's own art
that one need keep sacred." She added the last sentence
a little defiantly.

Bat the correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ was not thinking
of that aspect of the matter. "It's not a thing you can
jump into," he said shortly. "Have you written anything,
anywhere, for the press before?"

"Only one or two things that have appeared in the local
paper at home. They were more or less admired by the
people there, so far as that goes."

"Were you paid for them?"

Elfrida shook her head. "I've often heard the editor say
he paid for nothing but his telegrams," she said.

"There it is, you see."

"I want to write for _Raffini's Chronicle_," Elfrida said
quickly. "You know the editor of _Raffini_, of course,
Mr. Parke. You know everybody. Will you do me the very
great favor to tell him that I will report society
functions for him at one half the price he is accustomed
to pay for such writing, and do it more entertainingly?"

Frank Parke smiled. "You are courageous indeed, Hiss
Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every
where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like
her alphabet I believe she holds stock in _Raffini_;
anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her.
You would have more chance of ousting their leader-writer."

"I should be sorry to oust anybody," Elfrida returned
with dignity.

"How do you propose to help it, if you go in for doing
better or cheaper what somebody else has been doing
before?"

Miss Bell thought for a minute, and demonstrated her
irresponsibility with a little shrug. "Then I'm very
sorry," she said. "But, monsieur, you haven't told me
what to do."

The illuminator of European politics for the _Daily Dial_
wished heartily that it had been a matter of two or three
hundred francs.

"I'm afraid I--well, I don't see how I _can_ give you
any very definite advice. The situation doesn't admit of
it, Miss Bell. But--have you given up Lucien?"

"No. It is only that--that I must earn money to pay him."

"Oh! Home supplies stopped?"

"My people have lost all their money except barely enough
to live on. I cant expect another sou."

"That's hard lines!"

"I'm awfully sorry for them. But it isn't enough, being
sorry, you know. I must do something. I thought I might
write for _Raffini_, for--for practice, you know--the
articles they print are really very bad--and afterward
arrange to send Paris letters to some of the big American
newspapers. I know a woman who does it I assure you she
is quite stupid. And she is paid--but enormously!" Mr.
Parke repressed his inclination to smile.

"I believe that sort of thing over there is very much in
the hands of the syndicates--McClure and those fellows,"
he said, "and they won't look at you unless you're known.
I don't want to discourage you, Miss Bell, but it would
take you at least a year to form a connection. You would
have to learn Paris about five times as well as you fancy
you know it already, and then you would require a special
course of training to find out what to write about. And
then, remember, you would have to compete with people
who know every inch of the ground. Now if I can be of
any assistance to you _en camarade_, you know, in the
matter of your passage home--"

"Thanks," Elfrida interposed quickly, "I'm not going
home. If I can't write I can scrub, as I said. I must
find out." She put out her hand. "I am sure there are
not many of those fifteen minutes left," she said, smiling
and quite undismayed. "I have to thank you very sincerely
for--for sticking to the opinion you expressed when it
was only a matter of theory. As soon as I justify it in
practice I'll let you know."

The correspondent of the _Daily Dial_ hesitated, looked
at his watch and hesitated again. "There's plenty of
time," he fibbed, frowning over the problem of what might
be done.

"Oh no!" Elfrida said. "You are very kind, but there
can't be. You will be very late, and perhaps his Excellency
will have given the audience to the devil instead--or to
Monsieur de Pommitz." Her eyes expressed perfect
indifference. Frank Parke laughed outright. De Pommitz
was his rival for every political development, and shone
dangerously in the telegraphic columns of the London
_World_.

"De Pommitz isn't in it this time," he said. "I'll tell
you what I _might_ do, Miss Elfrida. How long have you
got for this--experiment?"

"Less than a week."

"Well, go home and write me an article--something locally
descriptive. Make it as bright as you can, and take a
familiar subject. Let me have it in three days, and I'll
see if I can get it into _Raffini_ for you. Of course,
you know, I can't promise that they'll look at it."

"You are very good," Elfrida returned hastily, seeing
his real anxiety to be off. "Something locally descriptive.
I've often thought the atelier would make a good subject."

"Capital, capital! Only be very careful about personalities
and so forth. _Raffini_ hates giving offence. Good-bye!
Here you, _cocher!_ Boulevard Haussmann!"




CHAPTER V.

John Kendal had only one theory that was not received
with respect by the men at Lucien's. They quoted it as
often as other things he said, but always in a spirit of
derision, while Kendal's ideas as a rule got themselves
discussed seriously, now and then furiously. This young
man had been working in the atelier for three years with
marked success almost from the beginning. The first things
he did had a character and an importance that brought
Lucien himself to admit a degree of soundness in the
young fellow's earlier training, which was equal to great
praise. Since then he had found the line in the most
interesting room in the Palais d'Industrie, the _cours_
had twice medalled him, and Albert Wolff was beginning
to talk about his _coloration delicieuse_. Also it was
known that he had condescended for none of these things.
His success in Paris added piquancy to his preposterous
notion that an Englishman should go home and paint England
and hang his work in the Academy, and made it even more
unreasonable than if he had failed.

"For me," remarked Andre Vambery, with a finely curled
lip, "I never see an English landscape without thinking
of what it would bring _par hectare_. It is _trop
arrangee_, that country, all laid out in a pattern of
hedges and clumps, for the pleasure of the milords. And
every milord has the taste of every other milord. He will
go home to perpetuate that!"

"_Si, si! Mais c'est pour sa patrie._"

Nadie defended him. Women always did.

"Bah!" returned her lover. "_Pour nous autres artists la
France est la patrie, et la France seule!_ Every day he
is in England he will lose--lose--lose. Enfin, he will
paint the portraits of the wives and daughters of Sir
Brown and Sir Smith, and he will do it as Sir Brown and
Sir Smith advise. _Avec son talent unique, distinctive!
Oh, je suis a bout de patience!_"

When Kendal's opinion materialized and it became known
that he meant to go back in February, and would send
nothing to the Salon that year, the studio tore its hair
and hugged its content. All but the master, who attempted
to dissuade his pupil with literal tears, of which he
did not seem in the least ashamed and which annoyed Kendal
very much. In fact, it was a dramatic splash of Lucien's
which happened to fall upon his coat-sleeve that decided
Kendal finally about the impossibility of living always
in Paris. He could not take life seriously where the
emotions lent themselves so easily. And Kendal thought
that he ought to take life seriously, because his natural
tendency was otherwise. Kendal was an Englishman with a
temperament which multiplied his individuality. If his
father, who was once in the Indian Staff Corps, had lived,
Kendal would probably have gone into the Indian Staff
Corps too. And if his mother, who was of clerical stock,
had not died about the same time, it is more than likely
that she would have persuaded him to the bar. With his
parents the obligation to be anything in particular seemed
to Kendal to have been removed, however, and he followed
his inclination in the matter instead, which made him an
artist. He would have found life too interesting to
confine his observation of it within the scope of any
profession, but of course he could have chosen none which
presents it with greater fascination. To speak quite
baldly about him, his intelligence and his sympathies
had a wider range than is represented by any one power
of expression, even the catholic brush. He had the
analytical turn of the age, though it had been denied
him to demonstrate what he saw except through an art
which is synthetic. With a more comprehensive conception
of modern tendencies and a subtler descriptive vocabulary,
Kendal might have divided his allegiance between Lucien
and the magazines, and ended a light-handed fiction-maker
of the more refined order of realists. As it was, he made
his studies for his own pleasure, and if the people he
met ministered to him further than they knew, nothing
came of it more than that. What he liked best to achieve
was an intimate knowledge of his fellow-beings from an
outside point of view. Where intimate knowledge came of
intimate association he found that it usually compromised
his independence of criticism, which in the Quartier
Latin was a serious matter. So he rather cold-bloodedly
aimed at keeping his own personality independent of his
observation of other people's, and as a rule he succeeded.

That Paris had neither made Kendal nor marred him may be
gathered for the first part from his contentment to go
back to paint in his native land, for the second from
the fact that he had a relation with Elfrida Bell which
at no point verged toward the sentimental. He would have
found it difficult to explain in which direction it did
verge--in fact, he would have been very much surprised
to know that he sustained any relation at all toward Miss
Bell important enough to repay examination. The red-armed,
white-capped proprietress of a _cremerie_ had effected
their introduction by regretting to them jointly that
she had only one helping of _compote de cerises_ left,
and leaving them to arrange its consumption between them.
And it is safer than it would be in most similar cases
to say that neither Elfrida's heavy-lidded beauty nor
the smile that gave its instant attraction to Kendal's
delicately eager face had much to do with the establishment
of their acquaintance, such as it was. Kendal, though
his virtue was not of the heroic order, would have turned
a contemptuous heel upon any imputation of the sort, and
Elfrida would have stared it calmly out of countenance.

To Elfrida it soon became a definite and agreeable fact
that she and the flower of Lucien's had things to say to
each other--things of the rare temperamental sort that
say themselves seldom. Within a fortnight she had made
a niche for him in that private place where she kept the
images of those toward whom she sustained this peculiarly
sacred obligation, and to meet him had become one of
those pleasures which were in Sparta so notably
unattainable. I cannot say that considerations which from
the temperamental point of view might be described as
ulterior had never suggested themselves to Miss Bell.
She had thought of them, with a little smile, as a possible
development on Kendal's part that might be amusing. And
then she had invariably checked the smile, and told
herself that she would be sorry, very sorry. Instinctively
she separated the artist and the man. For the artist she
had an admiration none the less sincere for its
exaggerations, and a sympathy which she thought the best
of herself; for the man, nothing, except the
half-contemptuous reflection that he was probably as
other men.

If Elfrida stamped herself less importantly upon the
surface of Kendal's mind than he did upon hers, it may
be easily enough accounted for by the multiplicity of
images there before her. I do not mean to imply that all
or many of these were feminine, but, as I have indicated,
Kendal was more occupied with impressions of all sorts
than is the habit of his fellow-countrymen, and at twenty
eight he had managed to receive quite enough to make a
certain seriousness necessary in a fresh one. There was
no seriousness in his impression of Elfrida. If he had
gone so far as to trace its lines he would have found
them to indicate a more than slightly fantastic young
woman with an appreciation of certain artistic verities
out of all proportion to her power to attain them. But
he had not gone so far. His encounters with her were
among his casual amusements; and if the result was an
occasional dinner together or first night at the Folies
Dramatiques, his only reflection was that a girl who
could do such things and not feel compromised was rather
pleasant to know, especially so clever a girl as Elfrida
Bell. He did not recognize in his own mind the mingled
beginnings of approval and disapproval which end in a
personal theory. He was quite unaware, for instance, that
he liked the contemptuous way in which she held at arm's
length the moral laxities of the Quartier, and disliked
the cool cynicism with which she flashed upon them there
the sort of _jeu de mot_ that did not make him uncomfortable
on the lips of a Frenchwoman. He understood that she had
nursed Nadie Palicsky through three weeks of diphtheria,
during which time Monsieur Vambery took up his residence
fourteen blocks away, without any special throb of
enthusiasm; and he heard her quote Voltaire on the
miracles--some of her ironies were a little old-fashioned
--without conscious disgust He was willing enough to meet
her on the special plane she constituted for herself--not
as a woman, but as an artist and a Bohemian. But there
were others who made the same claim with whom it was an
affectation or a pretence, and Kendal granted it to
Elfrida without any special conviction that she was more
sincere than the rest. Besides, it is possible to grow
indifferent, even to the unconventionalities, and Kendal
had been three years in the Quartier Latin.




CHAPTER VI

If Lucien had examined Miss Bell's work during the week
of her experiment with Anglo-Parisian journalism, he
would have observed that it grew gradually worse as the
days went on. The devotion of the small hours to composition
does not steady one's hand for the reproduction of the
human muscles, or inform one's eye as to the correct
manipulation of flesh tints. Besides, the model suffered
from Elfrida an unconscious diminution of enthusiasm.
She was finding her first serious attempt at writing more
absorbing than she would have believed possible, and she
felt that she was doing it better than she expected. She
was hardly aware of the moments that slipped by while
she dabbled aimlessly in unconsidered color meditating
a phrase, or leaned back and let nothing interfere with
her apprehension of the atelier with the other reproductive
instinct. She did not recognize the deterioration in her
work, either; and at the very moment when Nadie Palicsky,
observing Lucien's neglect of her, inwardly called him
a brute, Elfrida was to leave the atelier an hour earlier
for the sake of the more urgent thing which she had to
do. She finished it in five days, and addressed it to
Frank Parke with a new and uplifting sense of
accomplishment. The ever fresh miracle happened to her,
too, in that the working out of one article begot the
possibilities of half a dozen more, and the next day saw
her well into another. In posting the first she had a
premonition of success. She saw it as it would infallibly
appear in a conspicuous place in _Raffini's Chronicle_,
and heard the people of the American Colony wondering
who in the world could have written it. She conceived
that it would fill about two columns and a half. On
Saturday afternoon, when Kendal joined her crossing the
courtyard of the atelier, she was preoccupied with the
form of her rebuff to any inquiries that might be made
as to whether she had written it.

They walked on together, talking casually of casual
things. Kendal, glancing every now and then at the wet
study Elfrida was carrying home, felt himself distinctly
thankful that she did not ask his opinion of it, as she
had, to his embarrassment once or twice before; though
it was so very bad that he was half disposed to abuse it
without permission. Miss Bell seemed persistently
interested in other things, however--the theatres, the
ecclesiastical bill before the Chamber of Deputies, the
new ambassador, even the recent improvement of the police
system. Kendal found her almost tiresome. His
half-interested replies interpreted themselves to her
after a while, and she turned their talk upon trivialities,
with a gay exhilaration which was not her frequent mood.

She asked him to come up when they arrived, with a frank
cordiality which he probably thought of as the American
way. He went up, at all events, and for the twentieth
time admired the dainty chic of the little apartment,
telling himself, also for the twentieth time, that it
was extraordinary how agreeable it was to be there
--agreeable with a distinctly local agreeableness whether
its owner happened to be also there or not. In this he
was altogether sincere, and only properly discriminating.
He spent fifteen minutes wondering at her whimsical
interest, and when she suddenly asked him if he really
thought the race _had_ outgrown its physical conditions,
he got up to go, declaring it was too bad, she must have
been working up back numbers of the _Nineteenth Century_.
At which she consented to turn their talk into its usual
personal channel, and he sat down again content.

"Doesn't the Princess Bobaloff write a charming hand!"
Elfrida said presently, tossing him a square white
envelope.

"It isn't hers if it's an invitation. She has a wretched
relation of a Frenchwoman living with her who does all
that. May I light a cigarette?"

"You know you may. It is an invitation, but I didn't
accept."

"Her soiree last night? If I'd known you had been asked
I should have missed you."

"I ought to tell you," Elfrida went on, coloring a little,
"that I was invited through Leila Van Camp--that
ridiculously rich girl, you know, they say Lucien is in
love with. The Van Camp has been affecting me a good deal
lately. She says my manners are so pleasing, and besides,
Lucien once told her she painted better than I did. The
princess is a great friend of hers."

"Why didn't you go?" Kendal asked, without any appreciable
show of curiosity. If he had been looking closely enough
he would have seen that she was waiting for his question.

"Oh, it lies somehow, that sort of thing, outside my idea
of life. I have nothing to say to it, and it has nothing
to say to me."

Kendal smiled introspectively. He saw why he had been
shown the letter. "And yet," he said, "I venture to hope
that if we had met there we might have had some little
conversation."

Elfrida leaned back in her chair and threw up her head,
locking her slender fingers over her knee. "Of coarse,"
she said indifferently. "I understand why you should go.
You must. You have arrived at a point where the public
claims a share of your personality. That's different."

Kendal's face straightened out. He was too much of an
Englishman to understand that a personally agreeable
truth might not be flattery, and Elfrida never knew how
far he resented her candor when it took the liberty of
being gracious.

"I went in the humble hope of getting a good supper and
seeing some interesting people," he told her. "Loti was
there, and Madame Rives-Chanler, and Sargent."

"And the supper?" Miss Bell inquired, with a touch of
sarcasm.

"Disappointing," he returned seriously. "I should say
bad--as bad as possible." She gave him an impatient
glance.

"But those people--Loti and the rest--it is only a
serio-comic game to them to go the Princess Bobaloffs.
They wouldn't if they could help it They don't live their
real lives in such places--among such people!"

Kendal took the cigarette from his mouth and laughed.
"Your Bohemianism is quite Arcadian in its quality
--deliriously fresh," he declared. "I think they do.
Genius clings to respectability after a time. A most
worthy and amiable lady, the Princess."

Elfrida raised the arch of her eyebrows. "Much too worthy
and amiable," she ventured, and talked of something else,
leaving Kendal rasped, as she sometimes did, without
being in any degree aware of it.

"How preposterous it is," he said, moved by his irritation
to find something preposterous, "that girls like Miss
Van Camp should come here to work."

"They can't help being rich. It shows at least the germ
of a desire to work out their own salvation. I think I
like it."

"It shows the germ of an affectation in rather an advanced
stage of development. I give her three months more to
tire of snubbing Lucien and distributing caramels to the
less fortunate young ladies of the studio. Then she will
pack up those pitiful attempts of hers and take them home
to New York, and spend a whole season in glorious apology
for them."

Elfrida looked at him steadily for an instant. Then she
laughed lightly. "Thanks," she said. "I see you had not
forgotten my telling you that Lucien said she painted
better than I did."

Kendal wondered whether he had really meant to go so far. "I
am sorry," he said, "but I am afraid I had not forgotten it."

"Well, you would not say it out of ill-nature. You must
have wanted me to know--what you thought."

"I think," he said seriously, "that I did--at least that
I do--want you to know. It seems a pity that you should
work on here--mistakenly--when there are other things
that you could do well."

"'Other things' have been mentioned to me before," she
returned, with a strain in her voice that she tried to
banish. "May I ask what particular thing occurs to you?"

He was already remorseful. After all, what business of
his was it to interfere, especially when he knew that
she attached such absurd importance to his opinion? "I
hardly know," he said, "but there must be something; I
am convinced that there is something."

Elfrida put her elbows on a tittle table, and shadowed
her face with her hands.

"I wish I could understand," she said, "why I should be
so willing to--to go on at any sacrifice, if there is no
hope in the end."

Kendal's mood of grim frankness overcame him again. "I
believe I know," he said, watching her. Her hands dropped
from her face, and she turned it toward him mutely.

"It is not achievement you want, but success. That is
why," said he.

There was silence for a moment, broken by light footsteps
on the stair and a knock. "My good friends," cried
Mademoiselle Palicsky from the doorway, "have you been
quarrelling?" She made a little dramatic gesture to match
her words, which brought out every line of a black velvet
and white corduroy dress, which would have been a horror
upon an Englishwoman. Upon Mademoiselle Palicsky it was
simply an admiration-point of the kind never seen out of
Paris, and its effect was instantaneous. Kendal
acknowledged it with a bow of exaggerated deference.
"_C'est parfait!_" he said with humility, and lifted a
pile of studies off the nearest chair for her.

Nadie stood still, pouting. "Monsieur is amused," she
said. "Monsieur is always amused. But I have that to tell
which monsieur will graciously take _au grand servieux_."

"What is it, Nadie?" Elfrida asked, with something like
dread in her voice. Nadie's air was so important, so
rejoiceful.

"_Ecoutez donc!_ I am to send two pictures to the Salon
this year. Carolos Duran has already seen my sketch for
one, and he says there is not a doubt--_not a doubt_--that
it will be considered. Your congratulations, both of you,
or your hearts' blood! For on my word of honor I did
not expect it this year."

"A thousand and one!" cried Kendal, trying not to see
Elfrida's face. "But if you did not expect it this year,
mademoiselle, you were the only one who had so little
knowledge of affairs," he added gaily.

"And now," Nadie went on, as if he had interrupted her,
"I am going to drive in the Bois to see what it will be
like when the people in the best carriages turn and say,
'That is Mademoiselle Nadie Palicsky, whose picture has
just been bought for the Luxembourg.'"

She paused and looked for a curious instant at Elfrida,
and then slipped quickly behind her chair. "_Embrasse
moi, cherie!_" she said, bringing her face with a bird-like
motion close to the other girl's.

Kendal saw an instinctive momentary aversion in the
backward start of Elfrida's head, and from the bottom of
his heart he was sorry for her. She pushed her friend
away almost violently.

"No!" she said. "No! I am sorry, but it is too childish.
We never kiss each other, you and I. And listen, Nadie:
I am delighted for you, but I have a sick headache--_la
migraine_, you understand. And you must go away, both of
you--both of you!" Her voice raised itself in the last
few words to an almost hysterical imperativeness. As they
went down the stairs together Mademoiselle Palicsky
remarked to Mr. John Kendal, repentant of the good that
he had done:

"So she has consulted her oracle and it has barked out
the truth. Let us hope she will not throw herself into
the Seine!"

"Oh no!" Kendal replied. "She's horribly hurt but I am
glad to believe that she hasn't the capacity for tragedy.
Somebody," he added gloomily, "ought to have told her
long ago."

Half an hour later the postman brought Elfrida a letter
from Mr. Frank Parke, and a packet containing her
manuscript. It was a long letter, very kind, and
appreciative of the article, which Mr. Parke called
bright and gossipy, and, if anything, too cleverly
unconventional in tone. He did not take the trouble to
criticise it seriously, and left Elfrida under the
impression that, from his point of view at least, it had
no faults. Mr. Parke had offered the article to _Raffini_,
but while they might have printed it upon his
recommendation, it appeared that even his recommendation
could not induce them to promise to pay for it. And it
was a theory with him that what was worth printing was
invariably worth paying for, so he returned the manuscript
to its author in the sincere hope that it might yet meet
its deserts. He had been thinking over the talk they had
had together, and he saw more plainly than ever the
hopelessness of her getting a journalistic start in Paris,
however, and he would distinctly advise her to try London
instead. There were a number of ladies' papers published
in London--he regretted that he did not know the editors
of any of them--and amongst them, with her freshness of
style, she would be sure to find an opening. Mr. Parke
added the address of a lodging-house off Fleet Street,
where Elfrida would be in the thick of it, and the fact
that he was leaving Paris for three months or so, and
hoped she would write to him when he came back. It was
a letter precisely calculated to draw an unsophisticated
amateur mind away from any other mortification, to pour
balm upon any unrelated wound. Elfrida felt herself armed
by it to face a sea of troubles. Not absolutely, but
almost, she convinced herself on the spot that her solemn
choice of an art had been immature, and to some extent
groundless and unwarrantable; and she washed all her
brushes with a mechanical and melancholy sense that it
was for the last time. It was easier than she would have
dreamed for her to decide to take Frank Parke's advice
and go to London. The life of the Quartier had already
vaguely lost in charm since she knew that she must be
irredeemably a failure in the atelier, though she told
herself, with a hot tear or two, that no one loved it
better, more comprehendingly, than she did. Her impulse
was to begin packing at once; but she put that off until
the next day, and wrote two or three letters instead.
One was to John Kendal. This is the whole of it:

   "Please believe me very grateful for your frankness
   this afternoon. I have been most curiously blind. But
   I agree with you that there is something else, and I
   am going away to find it out and to do it. When I
   succeed I will let you know, but you shall not tell
   me that I have failed again.

   "ELFRIDA BELL."

The other was addressed to her mother, and when it reached
Mr. and Mrs. Bell in Sparta they said it was certainly
sympathetic and very well written. This was to disarm
one another's mind of the suspicion that its last page
was doubtfully daughterly.

   "In view of what are now your very limited resources,
   I am sure dear mother, you will understand my
   unwillingness to make any additional drain upon them,
   as I should do if I followed your wishes and came
   home. I am convinced of my ability to support myself,
   and I am not coming home. To avoid giving you the pain
   of repeating your request, and the possibility of your
   sending me money which you cannot afford to spare, I
   have decided not to let you know my whereabouts until
   I can write to you that I am in an independent position.
   I will only say that I am leaving Paris, and that no
   letters sent to this address will be forwarded. I
   sincerely hope you will not allow yourself to be in
   any way anxious about me, for I assure you that there
   is not the slightest need. With much love to papa and
   yourself,

   "Always your affectionate daughter,

   "ELFRIDA.

   "P.S.--I hope your asthma has again succumbed
   to Dr. Paley."




CHAPTER VII.

There was a scraping and a stumbling sound in the second
floor front bedroom of Mrs. Jordan's lodgings in a by-way
of Fleet Street, at two o'clock in the morning. It came
up to Elfrida mixed with the rattle of a departing cab
over the paving-stones below, outside where the fog was
lifting and showing one street-lamp to another. Elfrida
in her attic had been sitting above the fog all night;
her single candle had not been obscured by it. The cab
had been paid and the andirons were being disturbed by
Mr. Golightly Ticke, returned from the Criterion Restaurant,
where he had been supping with the leading lady of the
Sparkle Company, at the leading, lady's expense. She
could afford it better than he could, she told him, and
that was extremely true, for Mr. Ticke had his capacities
for light comedy still largely to prove, while Mademoiselle
Phyllis Fane had almost disestablished herself upon the
stage, so long and so prosperously had she pirouetted
there. Mr. Golightly Ticke's case excited a degree of
the large compassion which Mademoiselle Phyllis had for
incipient genius of the interesting sex, and which served
her instead of virtue of the more ordinary sort. He had
a doable claim upon it, because, in addition to being
tall and fair and misunderstood by most people, with a
thin nose that went beautifully with a medieval costume,
he was such a gentleman. Phyllis loosened her purse-strings
instinctively, with genuine gratification, whenever this
young man approached. She believed in him; he had ideas,
she said, and she gave him more; in the end he would be
sure to "catch on." Through the invariable period of
obscurity which comes before the appearance of any star,
she was in the habit of stating that he would have no
truer friend than Filly Fane. She "spoke to" the manager,
she pointed out Mr. Ticke's little parts to the more
intimate of her friends of the press. She sent him delicate
little presents of expensive cigars, scents, and soaps;
she told him often that he would infallibly "get there."
The fact of his having paid his own cab-fare from the
Criterion on this particular morning gave him, as he
found his way upstairs, almost an injured feeling of
independence.

As the sounds defined themselves move distinctly, troublous
and uncertain, Elfrida laid down her pen and listened.

"What an absurd boy it is!" she said. "He's trying to go
to bed in the fireplace."

As a matter of fact, Mr. Ticke's stage of intoxication
was not nearly so advanced as that; but Elfrida's mood
was borrowed from her article, and she felt the necessity
of putting it graphically. Besides, a picturesque form
of stating his condition was almost due to Mr. Ticke.
Mr. Ticke lived the unfettered life; he was of the elect;
Elfrida reflected, as Mr. Ticke went impulsively to bed,
how easy it was to discover the elect. A glance would do
it, a word, the turning of an eyelid; she knew it of
Golightly Ticke days before he came up in an old velvet
coat, and without a shirt collar, to borrow a sheet of
note paper and an envelope from her. On that occasion
Mr. Ticke had half apologized for his appearance, saying,
"I'm afraid I'm rather a Bohemian," in his sympathetic
voice. To which Elfrida had responded, hanging him the
note paper, "Afraid!" and the understanding was established
at once. Elfrida did not consider Mr. Ticke's other
qualifications or disqualifications; that would have been
a bourgeois thing to do. He was a _belle dame_, that was
sufficient. He might find life difficult, it was natural
and probable. She, Elfrida Bell, found it difficult. He
had not succeeded yet; neither had she; therefore they
had a comradeship--they and a few others--of revolt
against the dull conventional British public that barred
the way to success. Yesterday she had met him at the
street-door, and he had stopped to remark that along the
Embankment nature was making a bad copy of one of
Vereschagin's pictures. When people could say things like
that, nothing else mattered much. It is impossible to
tell whether Miss Bell would have found room in this
philosophy for the godmotherly benevolence of Mademoiselle
Fane, if she had known of it, or not.

It was a long, low-roofed room in which Elfrida Bell
meditated, biting the end of her pen, upon the difference
it made when a fellow-being was not a Philistine; and it
was not in the least like any other apartment Mrs. Jordan
had to let. It was the atelier of the Rue Porte Royale
transported. Elfrida had brought all her possessions with
her, and took a nameless comfort in arranging them as
she liked them best. "Try to feel at home," she said
whimsically to her Indian zither as she hung it up. "We
shall miss Paris, you and I, but one day we shall go back
together." A Japanese screen wandered across the room
and made a bedroom of the end. Elfrida had to buy that,
and spent a day in finding a cheap one which did not
offend her. The floor was bare except for a little Afghan
prayer-carpet, Mrs. Jordan having removed, in suspicions
astonishment, an almost new tapestry of as nice a pattern
as she ever set eyes on, at her lodger's request. A
samovar stood on a little square table in the corner,
and beside it a tin box of biscuits. The dormer-windows
were hung with Eastern stuffs, a Roman lamp stood on the
mantel, a Koran-holder held Omar Khayyam second-hand,
and Meredith's last novel, and "Anna Karenina," and
"Salammbo," and two or three recent numbers of the
_Figaro_. Here and there on the wall a Salon photograph
was fastened. A study of a girl's head that Nadie had
given her was stuck with a Spanish dagger over the
fireplace. A sketch of Vambety's and one of Kendal's,
sacredly framed, hung where she could always see them.
There was a vague suggestion of roses about the room,
and a mingled fragrance of joss-sticks and cigarettes.
The candle shone principally upon a little bronze Buddha,
who sat lotus-shrined on the writing-table among Elfrida's
papers, with an ineffable, inscrutable smile. On the top
shelf of a closet in the wall a small pile of canvases
gathered dust, face downward. Not a brush-mark of her
own was visible. She told herself that she had done with
that.

The girl sat with her long cloak about her and a blanket
over her knees. Her fingers were almost nerveless with
cold; as she laid down her manuscript she tried to wring
warmth into them. Her face was white, her eyes were
intensely wide open and wide awake; they had black dashes
underneath, an emphasis they did not need. She lay back
in her chair and gave the manuscript a little push toward
Buddha smiling in the middle of the table. "Well?" she
said, regarding him with defiant inquiry, cleverly mocked.

Buddha smiled on. The candle spattered, and his shadow
danced on three or four long thick envelopes lying behind
him. Elrida's eyes followed it.

"Oh!" said she, "you refer me to those, do you? _Ce n'est
pas poli_, Buddha dear, but you are always honest, aren't
you?" She picked op the envelopes and held them fanwise
before her. "Tell me, Buddha, why have they all been sent
back? I myself read them with interest, I who wrote them,
and surely that proves something!" She pulled a page or
two out of one of them, covered with her clear, conscious,
handwriting, a handwriting with a dainty pose in it
suggestive of inscrutable things behind the word. Elfrida
looked at it affectionately, her eyes caressed the lines
as she read them. "I find here true things and clever
things," she went on; "Yes, and original, _quite_ original
things. That about Balzac has never been said before--I
assure you, Buddha, it has never been said before! Yet
the editor of the _Athenian_ returns it to me in two days
with a printed form of thanks--exactly the same printed
form of thanks with which he would return a poem by
Arabella Jones! Is the editor of the _Athenian_ a dolt,
Buddha? The _Decade_ typewrites his regrets--that's
better--but the _Bystander_ says nothing at all but
'Declined with thanks' inside the flap of the envelope."
The girl stared absently into the candle. She was not in
reality greatly discouraged by these refusals: she knew
that they were to be expected: indeed, they formed part
of the picturesqueness of the situation in which she saw
herself, alone in London, making her own fight for life
as she found it worth living, by herself, for herself,
in herself. It had gone on for six weeks; she thought
she knew all its bitterness, and she saw nowhere the
faintest gleam of coming success; yet the idea of giving
it up did not even occur to her. At this moment she was
reflecting that after all it was something that her
articles had been returned--the editors had evidently
thought them worth that much trouble--she would send them
an off again in the morning, trying; the _Athenian_
article with the _Decade_, and the rejected of the _Decade_
with the _Bystander_: they would see that she did not
cringe before one failure or many. Gathering up the loose
pages of one article to put them back, her eyes ran
mechanically again over its opening sentences. Suddenly
something magnetized them, a new interest flashed into
them; with a little nervous movement she brought the page
closer to the candle and looked at it carefully. As she
looked she blushed crimson, and dropping the paper,
covered her face with her hands.

"Oh, _Buddha!_" she cried softly, struggling with her
mortification, "no wonder they rejected it! There's a
mistake in the very second line--a mistake in _spelling!_"
She felt her face grow hotter as she said it, and
instinctively she lowered her voice. Her vanity was
pricked as with a sword; for a moment she suffered keenly.
Her fabric of hope underwent a horrible collapse; the
blow was at its very foundation. While the minute hand
of her mother's old-fashioned gold watch travelled to
its next point, or for nearly as long as that, Elfrida
was under the impression that a person who spelled
"artificially" with one _L_ could never succeed in
literature. She believed she had counted the possibilities
of failure. She had thought of style, she had thought of
sense--she had never thought of spelling! She began with
a penknife to make the word right, and almost fearfully
let herself read the first few fines. "There are no more!"
she said to herself, with a sigh of relief. Turning the
page, she read on, and the irritation began to fade out
of her face. She turned the next page and the next, and
her eyes grew interested, absorbed, enthusiastic. There
were some more, one or two, but she did not see them.
Her house of hope built itself again. "A mere slip," she
said, reassured; and then, as her eye fell on a little
fat dictionary that held down a pile of papers, "But I'll
go over them all in the morning, to make sore, with
_that_."

Then she turned with new pleasure to the finished work
of the night, settled the sheets together, put them in
an envelope, and addressed it:

   _The Editor,_
      _The Consul,_
          _6 Tibby's Lane,_
             _Fleet Street, E. C._

She hesitated before she wrote. Should she write "The
Editor" only, or "George Alfred Curtis, Esq.," first,
which would attract his attention, perhaps, as coming
from somebody who knew his name. She had a right to know
his name, she told herself; she had met him once in the
happy Paris days. Kendal bad introduced him to her, in
a brief encounter at the Salon, and she remembered the
appreciativeness of the glance that accompanied the stout
middle-aged English gentleman's bow. Kendal had told
her then that Mr. Curtis was the editor of the _Consul_.
Yes, she had a right to know his name. And it might make
the faintest shadow of a difference--but no, "The Editor"
was more dignified, more impersonal; her article should
go in upon its own merits, absolutely upon its own merits;
and so she wrote.

It was nearly three o'clock, and cold, shivering cold.
Mr. Golightly Ticke had wholly subsided. The fog had
climbed up to her, and the candle showed it clinging to
the corners of the room. The water in the samovar was
hissing. Elfrida warmed her hands upon the cylinder and
made herself some tea. With it she disposed of a great
many sweet biscuits from the biscuit box, and thereafter
lighted a cigarette. As she smoked she re-read an old
letter, a long letter in a flowing foreign hand, written
from among the haymakers at Barbizon, that exhaled a
delicate perfume. Elfrida had read it thrice for comfort
in the afternoon; now she tasted it, sipping here and
there with long enjoyment of its deliciousness. She kissed
it as she folded it up, with the silent thought that this
was the breath of her life, and soon--oh, passably
soon--she could bear the genius in Nadie's eyes again.

Then she went to bed. "You little brute," she said to
Buddha, who still smiled as she blew out the candle,
"can't you forget it?"




CHAPTER VIII.

Miss Bell arose late the next morning, which was not
unusual. Mrs. Jordan had knocked three times vainly, and
then left the young lady's chop and coffee outside the
door on the landing. If she _would_ 'ave it cold, Mrs.
Jordan reasoned, she would, and more warnin' than knockin'
three times no livin' bean could expect Mrs. Jordan went
downstairs uneasy in her mind, however. The matter of
Miss Bell's breakfast generally left her uneasy in her
mind. It was not in reason, Mrs. Jordan thought, that a
young littery lady should keep that close, for Elfrida's
custom of having her breakfast deposited outside her door
was as invariable as it was perplexing. Miss Bell was as
charming to her land-lady as she was to everybody else,
but Mrs. Jordan found a polite pleasantness that permitted
no opportunity for expansion whatever more stimulating
to the curiosity and irritating to the mind generally
than the worst of bad manners would have been. That was
the reason she knocked three times when she brought up
Miss Bell's breakfast. At Mr. Ticke's door she wrapped
once, and cursorily at that. Mr. Ticke was as conversational
as you please on all occasions, and besides, Mr. Ticke's
door was usually half open. The shroud of mystery in
which Mrs. Jordan wrapped her "third floor front" grew
more impenetrable as the days went by. Her original
theory, which established Elfrida as the heroine of the
latest notorious divorce case, was admirably ingenious,
but collapsed in a fortnight with its own weight. "Besides,"
Mrs. Jordan reasoned, "if it 'ad been that person, ware
is the corrispondent all this time? There's been nothin'
in the shape of a corrispondent hangin' round _this_
house, for I've kep' my eye open for one. I give 'er up,"
said Mrs. Jordan darkly, "that's wot I do, an' I only
'ope I won't find 'er suicided on charcoal some mornin'
like that pore young poetiss in yesterday's paper."

Another knock, half an hour later, found Elfrida finishing
her coffee. Out-of-doors the world was gray, the little
square windows were beaten with rain. Inside the dreariness
was redeemed to the extent of a breath, a suggestion. An
essence came out of the pictures and the trappings, and
blended itself with the lingering fragrance of the
joss-sticks and the roses and the cigarettes in a delightful
manner. The room was almost warm with it. It seemed to
centre in Elfrida; as she sat beside the writing-table,
whose tumultuous papers had been pushed away to make room
for the breakfast dishes, she was instinct with it.

Miss Bell glanced hurriedly around the room. It was
unimpeachable--not so much as a strayed collar interfered
with its character as an apartment where a young lady
might receive. "Come in," she said. She knew the knock.

The door opened slowly to a hesitating push, and disclosed
Mr. Golightly Ticke by degrees. Mr. Ticke was accustomed
to boudoirs less rigid in their exclusiveness, and always
handled Miss Bell's door with a certain amount of
embarrassment. If she wanted a chance to whisk anything
out of the way he would give her that chance. Fully in
view of the lady and the coffee-pot Mr. Ticke made a
stage bow. "Here is my apology," he said, holding out a
letter; "I found it in the box as I came in."

It was another long thick envelope, and in its upper left
hand corner was printed, in early English lettering, _The
St. George's Gazette_. Elfrida took it with the faintest
perceptible change of countenance. It was another
discomfiture, but it did not prevent her from opening
her dark eyes with a remote effect of pathos entirely
disconnected with its reception. "And you climbed all
these flights to give it to me!" she said, with gravely
smiling plaintiveness. "Thank you. Why should you have
been so good? Please, please sit down."

Mr. Ticke looked at her expressively. "I don't know, Miss
Bell, really. I don't usually take much trouble for
people. I say it without shame. Most people are not worth
it. You don't mind my saying that you're an exception,
though. Besides, I'm afraid I had my eye on my reward."

"You're reward!" Elfrida repeated. Her smiling comprehension
insisted that it did not understand.

"The pleasure of saying good-morning to you. But that
is an inanity, Miss Bell, and unworthy of me. I should
have left you to divine it."

"How could I divine an inanity in connection with you?"
she answered, and her eyes underlined her words. When he
returned, "Oh, you always parry!" she felt a little thrill
of pleasure with herself. "How did it go--last night?"
she asked.

"Altogether lovely. Standing room only, and the boxes
taken for a week. I find myself quite adorable in my
little part now. I _feel_ it, you know. I am James Jones,
a solicitor's clerk, to my fingers' ends. My nature
changes, my environment changes, the instant I go on.
But a little thing upsets me. Last night I had to smoke
a cigar--the swell of the piece gives me a cigar--and he
gave me a poor one. It wasn't in tone--the unities
required that he should give me a good cigar. See? I felt
quite confused for the moment."

Elfrida's eyes had strayed to the corner of her letter.
"If you want to read that," continued Mr. Ticke, "I know
you won't mind me."

"Thanks," said Elfrida calmly. "I've read it already.
It's a rejected article."

"My play came back again yesterday for the thirteenth
time. The fellow didn't even look at it. I know, because
I stuck the second and third pages together as if by
accident, and when it came back they were still stuck.
And yet these men pretend to be on the lookout for original
work! It's a thrice beastly world, Miss Bell."

Elfrida widened her eyes again and smiled with a vague
impersonal winningness. "I suppose one ought not to care,"
said she, "but there is the vulgar necessity of living."

"Yes," agreed Mr. Ticke; and then sardonically: "Waterloo
Bridge at ebb tide is such a nasty alternative. I could
never get over the idea of the drainage."

"Oh, I know a better way than that." She chose her words
deliberately. "A much better way. I keep it here," holding
up the bent little finger of her left hand. It had a
clumsy silver ring on it, square and thick in the middle,
bearing deep-cut Sanskrit letters. "It is a dear little
alternative," she went on, "like a bit of brown sugar.
Rather a nice taste, I believe,--and no pain. When I am
quite tired of it all I shall use this, I think. My idea is
that it's weak to wait until you can't help it. Besides, I
could never bear to become--less attractive than I am now."

"Poison!" said Mr. Golightly Ticke, with an involuntarily
horrified face. Elfrida's hand was hanging over the edge
of the table, and he made as if he would examine the ring
without the formality of asking leave.

She drew her fingers away instantly. "In the vernacular,"
she answered coolly. "You may not touch it."

"I beg your pardon. But how awfully chic!"

"It _is_ chic, isn't it? Not so very old, you know."
Elfrida raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips a little.
"It came from Persia. They still do things like that in
those delightful countries. And I've had it tested.
There's enough to--satisfy--three people. When you are
quite sure you want it I don't mind sharing with you. If
you are going out, Mr. Ticke, will you post this for me?
It's a thing about American social ideals, and I'm trying
the _Consul_ with it."

"Delighted. But if I know the editor of the _Consul_, it
won't get two minutes' consideration."

"No?"

"Being the work of a lady, no. Doesn't matter how good
it is. The thing to know about the _Consul_ man is this.
He's very nice to ladies--can't resist ladies; consequence
is, the paper's half full of ladies' copy every week. I
know, because a cousin of mine writes for him, and most
unsympathetic stuff it is. Yet it always goes in, and
she gets her three guineas a week as regularly as the
day comes. But her pull is that she knows him personally,
and she's a damned pretty woman."

Elfrida followed him with interest. "Is she as pretty as
I am?" she asked, purely for information.

"Lord, no!" Mr. Ticke responded warmly. "Besides, you've
got style, and distinction, and ideas. Any editor would
appreciate your points, once you saw him. But you've got
to see him first. My candid advice is _take_ this to the
_Consul_ office."

Elfrida looked at him in a way which baffled him to
understand. "I don't think I can do that," she said
slowly; and then added, "I don't know."

"Well," he said, "I'll enter my protest against the
foolishness of doing it this way by refusing to post the
letter." Mr. Ticke was tremendously in earnest, and threw
it dramatically upon the table. "You may be a George
Eliot or a--an Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but in these
days you want every advantage, Miss Bell, and women who
succeed understand that."

Elfrida's face was still enigmatic, so enigmatic that
Mr. Ticke felt reluctantly constrained to stop. "I must
pursue the even tenor of my way," he said airily, looking
at his watch. "I've an engagement to lunch at one. _Don't_
ask me to post that article, Miss Bell. And by the way,"
as he turned to go, "I haven't a smoke about me. Could
you give me a cigarette?"

"Oh yes," said Elfrida, without looking at him, "as many
as you like," and she pushed an open box toward him; but
she had an absent, considering air that did not imply
any idea of what she was doing.

"Thanks, only one. Or perhaps two--there now, two! How
good these little Hafiz fellows are! Thanks awfully.
Good-bye!"

"Good-bye," said Elfrida, with her eyes on the packet
addressed to the editor of the _Consul_; and Mr. Golightly
Ticke tripped downstairs. She had not looked at him again.

She sat thinking, thinking. She applied herself first to
stimulate the revolt that rose within her against Golightly
Ticke's advice--his intolerably, no, his forgetfully
presumptuous advice. She would be just to him: he talked
so often to women with whom such words would carry weight,
for an instant he might fail to recognize that she was
not one of those. It was absurd to be angry, and not at
all in accordance with any theory of life that operated
in Paris. Instinctively, at the thought of a moral
indignation upon such slender grounds in Paris she gave
herself the benefit of a thoroughly expressive Parisian
shrug. And how they understood, success in Paris! Beasts!

And yet it was all in the game. It was a matter of skill,
of superiority, of puppet-playing. One need not soil
one's hands--in private one could always laugh. She
remembered how Nadie had laughed when three bunches of
roses from three different art critics had come in
together--how inextinguishably Nadie had laughed. It was
in itself a, success of a kind. Nadie had no scruples,
except about her work. She went straight to her end,
believing it to be an end worth arriving at by any means.
And now Nadie would presently be _tres en vue--tres en
vue!_ After all, it was a much finer thing to be scrupulous
about one's work--that was the real morality, the real
life. Elfrida closed her eyes and felt a little shudder
of consciousness of how real it was. When she opened
them again she was putting down her protest with a strong
hand, crushing her rebellious instincts unmercifully.
She did not allow herself a moment's self-deception. She
did not insult her intelligence by the argument that it
was a perfectly harmless and proper thing to offer a
piece of work to an editor in person--that everybody did
it--that she might thereby obtain some idea of what
would suit his paper if her article did not. She was
perfectly straightforward in confronting Golightly Ticke's
idea, and she even disrobed it, to her own consciousness,
of any garment of custom and conventionality it might
have had to his. Another woman might have taken it up
and followed it without an instant's hesitation, as a
matter concerning which there could be no doubt, a matter
of ordinary expediency--of course a man would be nicer
to a woman than to another man; they always were; it was
natural. But Elfrida, with her merciless insight, had to
harden her heart and ply her self-respect with assurances
that it was all in the game, and it was a superb thing
to be playing the game. Deliberately she chose the things
she looked best in, and went out.




CHAPTER IX.

The weather had cleared to a compromise. The dome of St.
Paul's swelled dimly out of the fog as Elfrida turned
into Fleet Street, and the railway bridge that hangs over
the heads of the people at the bottom of Ludgate Hill
seemed a curiously solid structure connecting space with
space. Fleet Street, wet and brown, and standing in all
unremembered fashions, lifted its antiquated head and
waited for more rain; the pavements glistened briefly,
till the tracking heels of the crowd gave them back their
squalor; and there was everywhere that newness of turmoil
that seems to burst even in the turbulent streets of the
City when it stops raining. The girl made her way toward
Charing Cross with the westward-going crowd. It went with
a steady, respectable jog-trot, very careful of its skirts
and umbrellas and the bottoms of its trousers; she took
pleasure in hastening past it with her light gait. She
would walk to the _Consul_ office, which was in the
vicinity of the Haymarket; indeed, she must, for the sake
of economy. "I ought really to be _very_ careful," thought
Elfrida. "I've only eight sovereigns left, and I can't
--oh, I _can't_ ask them for any more at home." So she
went swiftly on, pausing once before a picture-dealer's
in the Strand to make a mocking mouth at the particularly
British quality of the art which formed the day's exhibit,
and once to glance at a news-stand where two women of
the street, one still young and pretty, the other old
and foul, were buying the _Police Gazette_ from a
stolid-faced boy. "What a subject for Nadie," she said
to herself, smiling, and hurried on. Twenty yards further
a carter's horse lay dying with its head upon the pavement.
She made an impulsive detour of nearly half a mile to
avoid passing the place, and her thoughts recurred
painfully to the animal half a dozen times. The rain
came down again before she reached the _Consul_ office;
a policeman misinformed her, she had a difficulty in
finding it. She arrived at last, with damp skirts and
muddy boots. It had been a long walk, and the article
upon American social ideals was limp and spotted. A door
confronted her, flush with the street. She opened it.
and found herself at the bottom of a flight of stairs,
steep, dark, and silent. She hesitated a moment, and then
went up. At the top another closed door met her, with
_The Consul_ painted in black letters on the part of it
that consisted of ground glass somewhat the worse for
pencil-points and finger-nails. Elfrida lifted her hand
to knock, then changed her mind and opened the door.

It was a small room lined on two sides with deal
compartments bulging with dusty papers. There were two
or three shelves of uninteresting-looking books, and a
desk which extended into a counter. The upper panes of
the window were ragged with cobwebs, and the air of the
place was redolent of stale publications. A thick-set
little man in spectacles sat at the desk. It was not Mr.
Curtis.

The thick-set man rose as Elfrida entered, and came
forward a dubious step or two. His expression was not
encouraging.

"I have called to see the editor, Mr. Curtis," said she.

"The editor is not here."

"Oh, isn't he? I'm sorry for that. When is he likely to
be in? I want to see him particularly."

"He only comes here once a week, for about an hour,"
replied the little man, reluctant even to say so much.
"But I could see that he got a letter."

"Thanks," returned Elfrida. "At what time and on what
day does he usually come?"

"That I'm not at liberty to say," the occupant of the
desk replied briefly, and sat down again.

"Where _is_ Mr. Curtis?" Elfrida asked. She had not
counted upon this. To the physical depression of her walk
there added itself a strong disgust with the unsuccessful
situation. She persisted, knowing what she would have to
suffer from herself if she failed.

"Mr. Curtis is in the country. I cannot possibly give
you his address. You can write to him here, and the letter
will be forwarded. But he only sees people by
appointment--especially ladies," the little man added,
with a half-smile which had more significance in it than
Elfrida could bear. Her face set itself against the anger
that burned up in her, and she walked quickly from the
door to the desk, her wet skirts swishing with her steps.
She looked straight at the man, and began to speak in a
voice of constraint and authority.

"You will be kind enough to get up," she said, "and listen
to what I have to say." The man got up instantly.

"I came here," she went on, "to offer your editor an
article--this article;" she drew out the manuscript and
laid it before him. "I thought from the character of the
contributions to last week's number of the _Consul_ that
he might very well be glad of it."

Her tone reduced the man to silence. Mechanically he
picked up the manuscript and fingered the leaves.

"Read the first few sentences, please," said Elfrida.

"I've nothing to do with that department, miss--"

"I have no intention whatever of leaving it with you.
But I shall be obliged if you will read the first few
sentences." He read them, the girl standing watching him.

"Now," said she, "do you understand?" She took the pages
from his hand and returned them to the envelope.

"Yes, miss--it's certainly interesting, but--"

"Be quite sure you understand," said Elfrida, as the
ground-glass door closed behind her.

Before she reached the foot of the staircase she was in
a passion of tears. She leaned, against the wall in the
half darkness of the passage, shaking with sobs, raging
with anger and pity, struggling against her own contempt.
Gradually she gained a hold upon herself, and as she
dried her eyes finally she lost all feeling but a heavy
sense of failure. She sat down faintly on the lowest
step, remembering that she had eaten nothing since
breakfast, and fanned her flushed face with the sheets
of her manuscript. She preferred that even the unregarding
London streets should not see the traces of her distress.
She was still sitting there, ten minutes later, when the
door opened and threw the gray light from outside over
her. She had found her feet before Mr. Curtis had fairly
seen her. He paused, astonished, with his gloved hand
upon the knob. The girl seemed to have started out of
the shadows, and the emotion of her face dramatized its
beauty. She made a step toward the door.

"Can I do anything for you?" asked the editor of the
_Consul_, taking off his, hat.

"Nothing, thank you," Elfrida replied, looking beyond
him. "Unless you will kindly allow me to pass."

It was still raining doggedly, as it does in the the late
afternoon. Elfrida thought with a superlative pang of
discomfort of the three or four blocks that lay between
her and the nearest bake-shop. She put up her umbrella,
gathered her skirts up behind, and started wearily for
the Haymarket. She had never in her life felt so tired.
Suddenly a thrill of consciousness went up from her left
hand--the hand that held her skirts--such a thrill as
is known only to the sex that wills to have its pocket
there. She made one or two convulsive confirmatory clutches
at it from the outside, then, with a throe of actual
despair, she thrust her hand into her pocket. It was a
crushing fact, her purse was gone--her purse that held
the possibilities of her journalistic future molten and
stamped in eight golden sovereigns--her purse!

Elfrida cast one hopeless look at the pavement behind
her before she allowed herself to realize the situation.
Then she faced it, addressing a dainty French oath to
the necessity. "Come," she said to herself, "now it
begins to be really amusing--_la vraie comedie_." She
saw herself in the part--it was an artistic pleasure--alone,
in a city of melodrama, without a penny, only her brains.
Besides, the sense of extremity pushed and concentrated
her; she walked on with new energy and purpose. As she
turned into the Haymarket a cab drew up almost in front
of her. Through its rain-beaten glass front she recognized
a face--Kendal's. His head was thrown back to speak to
the driver through the roof. In the instant of her glance
Elfrida saw that he wore a bunch of violets in his
button-hole, and that he was looking splendidly well.
Then, with a smile that recognized the dramatic value of
his appearance at the moment, she lowered her umbrella
and passed on, unseen.

Almost gaily she walked into a pawnbroker's shop, and
obtained with perfect nonchalance five pounds upon her
mother's watch. She had no idea that she ought to dispute
the dictum of the bald young man with the fishy eyes and
the high collar. It did not occur to her that she was
paid too little. What she realized was that she had wanted
to pawn something all her life--it was a deliciously
effective extremity. She reserved her rings with the
distinct purpose of having the experience again. Then
she made a substantial lunch at a rather expensive
restaurant. "It isn't time yet," she thought, "for crusts
and dripping," and tipped the waiter a shilling, telling
him to get her a cab. As she turned into the Strand she
told the cabman to drive slowly, and made him stop at
the first newspaper office she saw. As she alighted a
sense of her extravagance dawned upon her, and she paid
the man off. Then she made a resolutely charming ascent
to the editorial rooms of the _Illustrated Age_.

Twenty minutes later she came down again, and the door
was opened for her by Mr. Arthur Rattray, one of the
sub-editors, a young man who had already distinguished
himself on the staff of the _Age_ by his intelligent
perception of paying matter, and his enterprise in securing
it. Elfrida continued to carry her opinions upon the
social ideals of her native democracy in their much
stained envelope, but there was a light in her eyes which
seemed to be the reflection of success.

"It's still raining," said the young man cheerfully.

"So it is," Elfrida responded. "And--oh, how atrocious
of me!--I've left my umbrella in the cab!"

"Hard luck!" exclaimed Mr. Rattray; "an umbrella is an
organic part of one in London. Shall I stop this 'bus?"

"Thanks, no. I'll walk, I think. It's only a little way.
I shan't get wet. Good-afternoon!" Elfrida nodded to him
brightly and hurried off; but it could not have occasioned
her surprise to find Mr. Rattray beside her a moment
later with a careful and attentive umbrella, and the
intention of being allowed to accompany her that little
way. By the time they arrived Mr. Rattray had pledged
himself to visit Scotland Yard next day in search of a
dark brown silk _en tout cas_ with a handle in the
similitude of an ivory mummy.

"Are these your diggings?" he asked, as they reached the
house. "Why, Ticke lives here too--the gentle Golightly--do
you know him?" Elfrida acknowledged her acquaintance with
Mr. Ticke, and Mr. Rattray hastened to deprecate her
thanks for his escort. "Remember," he said, "no theories,
no fine writing, no compositions. Describe what you've
seen and know, and give it a tang, an individuality.
And so far as we are concerned, I think we could use that
thing you proposed about the Latin Quarter, with plenty
of anecdote, very well. But you must make it short."




CHAPTER X.

Kendal mounted to Elfrida's _appartement_ in the Rue
Porte Royale to verify the intimation of her departure,
or happily to forestall its execution the morning after
her note reached him. He found it bare and dusty. A
workman was mending the stove; the concierge stood looking
on, with her arms folded above the most striking feature
of her personality. Every vestige of Elfrida was gone,
and the tall windows were open, letting the raw February
air blow through. Outside the sunlight lay in squares
and triangles on the roofs, and gave the place its
finishing touch of characterlessness. Yes, truly,
mademoiselle had gone, the evening before. Was monsieur
then not aware? The concierge was of opinion that
mademoiselle had had bad news, but her tone implied that
no news could be quite bad enough to justify the throwing
up of such desirable apartments upon such short notice.
Mademoiselle had left in such haste that she had forgotten
both to say where she was going and to leave an address
for letters; and it would not be easy to surpass the
consciousness of injury with which the concierge demanded
what she was to say to the _facteur_ on the day of the
post from America, when there were always four or five
letters for mademoiselle. Monsieur would be _bien amiable_,
if he would allow that they should be directed to him.
Upon reflection monsieur declined this responsibility.
With the faintest ripple of resentment at being left out
of Elfrida's confidence, he stated to himself that it
would be intrusive. He advised the concierge to keep them
for a week or two, during which Miss Bell would be sure
to remember to send for them, and turned to go.

"_Mademoiselle est allee a la Gare du Nord_," added the
concierge, entirely aware that she was contributing a
fact to Kendal's mental speculation, and wishing it had
a greater intrinsic value. But Kendal merely raised his
eyebrows in polite acknowledgment of unimportant
information. "En effet!" he said, and went away.
Nevertheless he could not help reflecting that _Gare du
Nord_ probably meant Calais, and Calais doubtless meant
England, probably London. As he thought of it he assured
himself that it was London, and his irritation vanished
at the thought of the futility of Elfrida in London. It
gave him a half curious, half solicitous amusement instead.
He pictured her with her Hungarian peasant's cloak and
any one of her fantastic hats in the conventional highways
he knew so well, and smiled. "She will have to take
herself differently there," he reflected, without pausing
to consider exactly what he meant by it, "and she'll find
that a bore." As yet he himself had never taken her
differently so far as he was aware, and in spite of the
obvious provocation of her behavior it did not occur to
him to do it now. He reflected with a shade of satisfaction
that she knew his London address. When she saw quite fit
she would doubtless inform him as to what she was doing
and where she might be found. He smiled again at the
thought of the considerations which Elfrida would put
into the balance against the pleasure of seeing him. They
were not humiliating; he was content to swing high on
the other side indefinitely; but he admitted to himself
that she had taken a pleasure out of Paris for him, and
went back to his studio missing it. He went on missing
it for quite two days, at the end of which he received
an impetuous visit--excessively impetuous considering
the delay--from Nadie Palicsky. In its course Mademoiselle
Palicsky declared herself robbed and wronged by "_cette
incomprise d'Americaine_," whom she loved--but _loved_,
did he understand? No, it was not probable that he
understood--what did a man know of love? As much perhaps
as that flame--Kendal permitted himself the luxury of an
open fire. Nadie stared into it for a moment with cynical
eyes. Under the indirect influence of Kendal's regard
they softened.

"She always understood. It was a joy to show her anything.
She interpreted Bastien Lepage better than I--indeed that
is true--but only with her soul, she had no hands. Yes,
I loved her, and she was good for me. I drew three breaths
in her presence for one in her absence. And she has taken
herself away; even in her letter--I had a line too--she
was as remote as a star! I hope," continued Nadie, with
innocent candor, as she swung her little feet on the
corner of Kendal's table, "that you do not love her too.
I say prayers to _le bon Dieu_, about it. I burn candles."

"And why?" Kendal asked, with a vigorous twist of his
palette knife.

"Because you are such a beast," she responded calmly,
watching his work with her round cleft chin in the shell
of her hand. "That's not bad, you know. That nearest girl
sitting on the grass is almost felt. But if you show it
to the English they will be so shocked that they will
use lorgnettes to hide their confusion. Ah!" she said,
jumping down, "here am I wasting myself upon you, with
a carriage _a l'heure!_ You are not worth it," and she
went. After that it seemed to Kendal that he did not miss
Elfrida so much. Certainly it never occurred to him to
hasten his departure by a day on her account, and there
came a morning when he drove through Bloomsbury and
realized that he had not thought about her for a fortnight.
The British Museum suggested her to him there--the British
Museum, and the certainty that within its massive walls
a number of unimaginative young women in collarless
sage-green gowns were copying casts of antique sculptures
at that moment. But he did not allow himself to suppose
that she could possibly be among them.

He sniffed London all day with a home-returning satisfaction
in her solidity and her ugliness and her low-toned fogs
and her great throbbing unostentatious importance, which
the more flippant capital seemed to have intensified in
him. He ordered the most British luncheon he could think
of, and reflected upon the superiority of the beer. He
read the leaders in the _Standard_ through to the bitter
end, and congratulated himself and the newspaper that
there was no rag of an absurd _feuilleton_ to distract
his attention from the importance of the news of the day.
He remembered all sorts of acquaintances that Paris had
foamed over for months; his heart warmed to a certain
whimsical old couple who lived in Park Street and went
out to walk every morning after breakfast with their
poodle. He felt disposed to make a formal call upon them
and inquire after the poodle. It was--perhaps with an
unconscious desire to make rather more of the idyl of
his homecoming that he went to see the Cardiffs instead,
who were his very old friends, and lived in Kensington
Square.

As he turned out of Kensington High Street into a shoppy
little thoroughfare, and through it to this quiet,
neglected high-nosed old locality, he realized with an
added satisfaction that he had come back to Thackeray's
London. One was apt, he reflected, with a charity which
he would not have allowed himself always, to undervalue
Thackeray in these days. After all, he once expressed
London so well that now London expressed him, and that
was something.

Kendal found the Cardiffs--there were only two, Janet
and her father--at tea, and the Halifaxes there, four
people he could always count on to be glad to see him.
It was written candidly in Janet's face--she was a natural
creature--as she asked him how he dared to be so unexpected.
Lady Halifax cried out robustly from the sofa to know
how many pictures he had brought back; and Miss Halifax,
full of the timid enthusiasm of the well-brought-up
elderly English girl, gave him a sallow but agreeable
regard from under her ineffective black lace hat, and
said what a surprise it was. When they had all finished,
Lawrence Cardiff took his elbow off the mantelpiece,
changed his cup into his other hand to shake hands, and
said, with his quiet, clean-shaven smile, "So you're
back!"

"Daddy has been hoping you would be here soon," said Miss
Cardiff. "He wants the support of your presence. He's
been daring to enumerate 'Our Minor Artists' in the _Brown
Quarterly_, and his position is perfectly terrible.
Already he's had forty-one letters from friends, relatives,
and picture-dealers suggesting names he has 'doubtless
forgotten.' Poor daddy says he never knew them."

"Has he mentioned me?" asked Kendal, sitting down squarely
with his cup of tea.

"He has not."

"Then it's in the character of the uncomplaining left-over
that I'm wanted, the modest person who waits until he's
better. I refuse to act. I'll go over to the howling
majority."

"_You_ will never be a minor artist, Mr. Kendal," ventured
Miss Halifax.

"Certainly not. You will rise to greatness at a bound,"
said Lady Halifax, with substantial conviction and an
illustrative wave of a fat well-gloved hand with a
doubled-up fragment of bread and butter between the thumb
and forefinger, "or we shall be much disappointed in
you."

"It's rapidly becoming a delicate compliment to have been
left out," Mr. Cardiff remarked, with melancholy.

"Some of those you've honored with your recognition are
the maddest of all, aren't they, daddy, as we say in
America! Dear old thing, you _are_ in a perilous case,
and who is to take you round at the Private Views this
year--that's the question of the hour! You needn't depend
upon me. There won't be a soul on the line that you
haven't either put in or left out!"

"It was a fearful thing to write about," Kendal responded
comfortably. "He deserves all the consequences. Let him
go round alone." Under the surface of his thoughts was
a pleased recognition of how little a fresh-colored
English girl changes in three years. Looking at Miss
Halifax's hat, it occurred to him that it was an agreeable
thing not to be eternally "struck" by the apparel of
women--so forcibly that he almost said it. "What have
you been doing?" he asked Janet.

"Wonders," Lady Halifax responded for her. "I can't
think where she gets the energy or the brains--"

"Can't you?" her father interrupted. "Upon my word!" Mr.
Cardiff had the serious facial muscles of a comedian,
and the rigid discipline he was compelled to give them
as a professor of Oriental tongues of London University
intensified their effect when it was absurd. The rest
laughed, and his cousin went on to say that she wished
_she_ had the gift. Her daughter echoed her, looking at
Janet in a way that meant she would say it, whatever the
consequences might be.

"I must see something," said Kendal, "immediately."

"_See_ something!" exclaimed Lady Halifax. "Well, look
in the last number of the _London Magazine_. But you'll
please show something first."

"Yes, indeed!" Miss Halifax echoed.

"When will you be ready for inspection?" Mr. Cardiff
asked.

"Come on Thursday, all of you. I'll show you what there
is."

"Will you give us our tea?" Miss Halifax inquired, with
a nervous smile.

"Of course. And there will be buns. You will do me the
invaluable service of representing the opinion of the
British public in advance. Will Thursday suit?"

"Perfectly," Lady Halifax replied. "The old rooms in
Bryanston Street, I suppose?"

"Thursday won't suit us," Janet put in decisively. "No,
papa; I've got people coming here to tea. Besides, Lady
Halifax is quite equal to representing the whole British
public by herself, aren't you, dear?" That excellent
woman nodded with a pretence of loftily consenting, and
her daughter gave Janet rather a suspicious glance. "Daddy
and I will come another day," Janet went on in reassuring
tones; "but we shall expect buns too, remember."

Then they talked of the crocuses in Kensington Gardens;
and of young Skeene's new play at the Princess's--they
all knew young Skeene, and wished him well; and of
Framley's forthcoming novel--Framley, who had made his
noble reputation by portrait-painting--good old Framley
--how would it go?

"He knows character," Kendal said.

"That's nothing now," retorted Lawrence Cardiff. "Does
he know where it comes from and where it's going to? And
can he choose? And has he the touch? And hasn't he been
too long a Royal Academician and a member of the Church
of England, and a believer in himself? Oh no! Framley
hasn't anything to tell this generation that he couldn't
say best on canvas."

"Well," said Lady Halifax disconcertingly, "I suppose
the carriage is at the door, Lawrence, but you might just
send to inquire. The horses stand so badly, I told Peters
he might take them round and round the square."

Cardiff looked at her with amused reproach, and rang the
bell; and Janet begged somebody or anybody to have another
cup of tea. The Halifaxes always tried Janet.

They went at last, entreating Cardiff, to his annoyance,
not to come down the narrow winding stair with them to
their carriage. To him no amount of familiar coming and
going could excuse the most trivial of such negligences.
He very often put Janet into her cab, always if it rained.

The moment they left the room a new atmosphere created
itself there for the two that remained. They sought each
other's eyes with the pleasantest sense of being together
in reality for the first time, and though Janet marked
it by nothing more significant than a suggestion that
Kendal should poke the fire, there was an appreciable
admission in her tone that they were alone and free to
talk, which he recognized with great good-will. He poked
the fire, and she on her low chair, clasping her knee
with both hands, looked almost pretty in the blaze. There
had always been between them a distinct understanding,
the understanding of good-fellowship and ideas of work,
and Kendal saw with pleasure that it was going to be
renewed.

"I am dying to tell you about it," he said.

"Paris?" she asked, looking up at him. "I am dying to
hear. The people, especially the people. Lucien, what
was he like? One hears so much of Lucien--they make him
a priest and a king together. And did you go to Barbizon?"

Another in her place might have added, "And why did you
write so seldom?" There was something that closed Janet's
lips to this. It was the same thing that would not permit
her to call Kendal "Jack," as several other people did,
though her Christian name had been allowed to him for a
long time. It made an awkwardness sometimes, for she
would not say "Mr. Kendal" either--that would be a rebuke
or a suggestion of inferiority, or what not--but she
bridged it over as best she could with a jocose appellative
like "signor," "monsieur," or "Mr. John Kendal," in full.
"Jack" was impossible, "John" was worse. Yes, with a
little nervous shudder, _much_ worse.

He told her about Paris to her fascination; she had never
seen it: about the boulevards and the cafes and the men's
ateliers, and the vagrant pathos of student life there--he
had seen some clean bits of it--and to all of this old
story he gave such life as a word or a phrase can give.
Even his repressions were full of meaning, and the
best--she felt it was the best--he had to offer her he
offered in fewest words, letting her imagination riot
with them. He described Lucien and the American Colony.
He made her laugh abundantly over the American amateur
as Lucien managed him. They had no end of fun over these
interesting, ingenious, and prodigal people in their
relation to Parisian professional circles. He touched on
Nadie Palicsky lightly, and perhaps it was because Janet
insisted upon an accentuation of the lines--he had sent
her a photograph of one of Nadie's best things--that he
refrained from mentioning Elfrida altogether. Elfrida,
he thought, he would keep till another time. She would
need so much explanation; she was too interesting to lug
in now, it was getting late. Besides, Elfrida was an
exhausting subject, and he was rather done.




CHAPTER XI.

Individually a large number of Royal Academicians
pronounced John Kendal's work impertinent, if not
insulting, meaningless, affected, or flippant.
Collectively, with a corporate opinion that might be
discussed but could not be identified, they received it
and hung it, smothering a distressful doubt, where it
would be least likely to excite either the censure of
the right-minded or the admiration of the unorthodox.
The Grosvenor gave him a discreet appreciation, and the
New received him with joy and thanksgiving. If he had
gone to any of the Private Views, which temptation he
firmly resisted, he would have heard the British public
--for after all the British public is always well
represented at a Private View--say discontentedly how
much better it would like his pictures if they were only
a little more finished. He might even have had the cruel
luck to hear one patron of the arts, who began by designing
the pictorial advertisements for his own furniture-polish,
state that he would buy that twilight effect with the
empty fields, if only the trees in the foreground weren't
so blurred. Other things, too, he might have heard that
would have amused him more as being less commonplace,
but pleased him no better, said by people who cast furtive
glances over their shoulders to see if anybody that might
be the artist was within reach of their discriminating
admiration; and here and there, if he had listened well,
a vigorous word that meant recognition and reward. It
was not that he did not long for the tritest word of
comment from the oracle before which he had chosen to
lay the fruit of his labors; indeed, he was so conscious
of his desire to know this opinion, not over clever as
he believed it, that he ran away on the evening of
varnishing-day. If he staid he felt that he would inevitably
compromise his dignity, so he hid himself with some
amiable people in Hampshire, who could be relied upon
not to worry him, for a week. He did not deny himself
the papers, however. They reached him in stacks, with
the damp chill of the afternoon post upon them; and in
their solid paragraphs he read the verdict of the British
public written out in words of proper length and much
the same phrases that had done duty for Eastlake and Sir
Martin Shee. Fortunately, the amiable people included
some very young people, so young that they could properly
compel Kendal to go into the fields with them and make
cowslip balls, and some robust girls of eighteen and
twenty, who mutely demanded the pleasure of beating him
at tennis every afternoon. He was able in this way to
work off the depression that visited him daily with the
damp odor of London art, criticism, quite independently
of its bias toward himself. He told himself that he had
been let off fairly easily, though he winced considerably
under the adulation of the _Daily Mercury_, and found
himself breathing most freely when least was said about
him. The day of his triumph in the _Mercury_ he made
monstrous cowslip balls, and thought that the world had
never been sufficiently congratulated upon possessing
the ideal simplicity of children.

Thereafter for two days nothing came, and he began to
grow restless. Then the _Decade_ made its weekly slovenly
appearance, without a wrapper. He opened it with the
accumulated interest of forty-eight hours, turned to
"Fine Arts," and girded himself to receive the _Decade's_
ideas. He read the first sentence twice--the article
opened curiously, for the _Decade_. He looked at the
cover to see whether he had not been mistaken. Then he
sat down beside the open window, where a fine rain came
in and smote upon the page, and read it through, straining
his eyes in the gathering darkness over the last paragraph.
After that he walked up and down the room among the
shadows for half an hour, not ringing for lights, because
the scented darkness of the garden, where the rain was
dripping, and the half outlines of the things in the room
were so much more grateful to his imagination as the
_Decade's_ critic had stimulated it with the young,
mocking, brilliant voice that spoke in the department of
"Fine Arts." It stirred him all through. In the pleasure
it gave him he refused to reflect how often it dismissed
with contempt where it should have considered with respect,
how it was sometimes inconsistent, sometimes exaggerated
and obscure. He was rapt in the delicacy and truth with
which the critic translated into words the recognizable
souls of a certain few pictures--it could not displease
him that they were very few, since three of his were
among them. When it spoke of these the voice was strong
and gentle, with an uplifted tenderness, and all the
suppressed suggestion that good pictures themselves have.
It made their quality felt in the lines, and it spoke
with a personal joy.

"A new note!" Kendal thought aloud. "A voice crying in
the wilderness, by Jove! Wolff might have done it if it
had been in French, but Wolff would have been fairer and
more technical and less sympathetic."

A fine energy crept all through him and burned at his
finger-ends. The desire to work seized him deliciously
with the thrill of being understood, a longing to accomplish
to the utmost of his limitations--he must reasonably
suppose his limitations. Sometimes they were close and
real; at this moment they were far off and vague, and
almost dissolved by the force of his joyous intention.
He threw himself mentally upon half-finished canvas that
stood against the wall in Bryanston Street, and spent
ten exalted minutes in finishing it. When it was done he
found it ravishing, and raged because he could not decently
leave for town before four o'clock next day. He worked
off the time before dinner by putting his things together,
and the amiable people had never found him so delightful
as he was that evening. After amusing one of the robust
young ladies for half an hour at prodigious cost, he
found himself comparing their conversation with the talk
he might have had in the time with Elfrida Bell, and a
fresh sense of injury visited him at having been
high-handedly debarred from that pleasure for so many
weeks. It staid with him and pricked him all the way to
town next day. He was a fool, he thought, to have missed
the chance of meeting her upon the opening days of the
London exhibitions; she was sure to have gone, if it were
only to scoff, and her scoffing would have been so amusing
to listen to. He thought gloomily of the impossibility
of finding her in London if she didn't wish to be found,
and he concluded that he really wanted to see her, that
he must see her soon--to show her that article.

The desire had not passed from him three days later, when
the boy from below-stairs brought him up a card. Kendal
was in his shirt-sleeves, and had just established a
relation of great intimacy with an entirely new subject.
Before the boy reached him he recognized with annoyance
that it was a lady's card, and he took it between his
thumb and his palette with the most brutal impatience.
"You are to say--" he began, and stopped. "Show the lady
up," he said in substitution, while his face cleared with
a puzzled amusement, and he looked at the card again. It
read "Miss Elfrida Bell," but the odd thing was down in
one corner, where ran the statement, in small square
type, "_The Illustrated Age_."

There was a sweet glory of May sunlight in the streets
outside, and she seemed to bring some of it in with her,
as well as the actual perfume of the bunch of violets
which she wore in her belt. Her eyes, under the queerest
of hats, were bright and soft, there was a faint color
in her cheeks. Her shapely hands were in gray gloves with
long gauntlets, and in one of them she carried a
business-like little black notebook.

She came in with a shy hesitation that became her very
well, and as she approached, their old understanding
immediately arranged itself between them. "I should be
perfectly justified in sulking," he declared gaily,
disencumbering a chair of a battered tin box of empty
twisted tubes for her, "and asking you to what I might
attribute the honor of this visit." He put up his eye-glass
and stared through it with an absurd affectation of
dignified astonishment. "But I'll magnanimously admit
that I'm delighted to see you. I'll even lay aside my
wounded sensibilities enough to ask you where you've
been."

"I!" faltered Elfrida softly, with her wide-eyed smile.
"Oh! as if that were of any consequence!" She stepped
back a pace or two to look at an unpacked canvas, and
her expression changed. "Ah!" she said gravely, "how good
it is to see that! I wish I could remember by myself so
much, half so much, of the sunlight of that country. In
three days of these fogs I had forgotten it. I mean the
reality of it Only a pale theory staid with me. Now it
comes back."

"Then you _have_ been in London?" he probed, while she
looked wistfully at the fringe of a wood in Brittany that
stood upon his canvas. Her eyes left the picture and
wandered around the room.

"I!" she said again. "In London? Yes, I have been in
London. How _splendidly_ different you are!" she said,
looking straight at him as if she stated a falling of
the thermometer or a quotation from the Stock Exchange.
"But are you sure, _perfectly_ sure," she went on, with
dainty emphasis, "that you can stay different? Aren't
you the least bit afraid that in the end your work may
become--pardon me--commercial, like the rest? Is there
no danger?"

"I wish you would sit down," Kendal said ruefully. "I
shouldn't feel it so much, perhaps, if you sat down. And
pending my acknowledgment of a Londoner's sin in painting
in London, it seems to me that you have put yourself
under pretty much the same condemnation."

"I have not come to paint," Elfrida answered quickly. "I
have put away the insanity of thinking I ever could. I
told you that, I think, in a letter. But there are--other
things. You may remember that you thought there were."

She spoke with so much repressed feeling that Kendal
reproached himself with not having thought carefully
enough about it to take her at her letter's word. He took
up the card that announced her, and looked again at the
lower left-hand corner. "I do remember, but I don't
understand. Is this one of them?" he asked.

Something, something absolutely unintentional and of the
slightest quality, in his voice operated to lower her
estimate of the announcement on the card, and she flushed
a little.

"It's--it's a way," she said. "But it was stupid
--bourgeois--of me to send up a card--such a card. With
most of these people it is necessary; with you, of course,
it was hideous! Give it to me, please," and she proceeded
to tear it slowly into little bits. "You must pardon
me," she went on, "but I thought, you know--we are not
in Paris now--and there might be people here. And then,
after all, it explains me."

"Then I should like another," Kendal interrupted.

"I'm going to do a descriptive article for the _Age_;
the editor wants to call it 'Through the Studios,' or
something of that sort--about the artists over here and
their ways of working, and their places, and their ideas,
and all that, and I thought, if you didn't mind, I should
like to begin with you. Though it's rather like taking
an advantage."

"But are you going in for this sort of thing seriously?
Have you ever done anything of the sort before? Isn't it
an uncommon grind?" Kendal asked, with hearty interest.
"What made you think of it? Of course you may say any
mortal thing you want to about me--though I call it
treachery, your going over to the critics. And I'm afraid
you won't find anything very picturesque here. As you
say, we're not in Paris."

"Oh yes, I shall," she replied sweetly, ignoring his
questions. "I like pipes and cobwebs and old coats hanging
on a nail, and plenty of litter and dust and confusion.
It's much better for work than tapestries and old armour
and wood-carvings."

Miss Bell did not open her little black notebook to record
these things, however. Instead, she picked up a number
of the _London Magazine_ and looked at the title of an
article pencil-marked on the pale green cover. It was
Janet Cardiff's article, and Lady Halifax had marked it.
Elfrida had read it before. It was a fanciful recreation
of the conditions of verse-making when Herrick wrote,
very pleasurably ironical in its bearing upon more modern
poetry-making. It had quite deserved the praise she gave
it in the corner which the _Age_ reserved for magazines.
"I want you to understand," she said slowly, "that it is
only a way. I shall not be content to stick at
this--ordinary--kind of journalistic work. I shall aim
at something better--something perhaps even as good as
that," she held up the marked article. "I wonder if she
realizes how fortunate she is--to appear between the same
covers as Swinburne!"

"It is not fortune altogether," Kendal answered; "she
works hard."

"Do you know her? Do you see her often? Will you tell
her that there is somebody who takes a special delight
in every word she writes?" asked Elfrida impulsively.
"But no, of course not! Why should she care--she must
hear such things so often. Tell me, though, what is she
like, and particularly how old is she?"

Kendal had begun to paint again; it was a compliment he
was able to pay only to a very few people. "I shall
certainly repeat it to her," he said. "She can't hear
such things often enough--nobody can. How shall I tell
you what she is like! She is tall, about as tall as you
are, and rather thin. She has a good color, and nice hair
and eyes."

"What colored eyes?"

"Brown, I think. No--I don't know, but not blue. And good
eyebrows. Particularly good eyebrows."

"She must be plain," Elfrida thought, "if he has to dwell
upon her eyebrows. And how old?" she asked again. "Much
over thirty?"

"Oh dear, no! Not thirty. Twenty-four, I should say."

Elfrida's face fell perceptibly. "Twenty-four!" she
exclaimed. "And I am already twenty! I shall never catch
up to her in four years. Oh, you have made me so unhappy!
I thought she must be _quite_ old--forty perhaps. I was
prepared to venerate her. But twenty-four and good
eyebrows! It is too much."

Kendal laughed. "Oh, I say!" he exclaimed, jumping up
and bringing a journal from the other side of the room,
"if you're going in for art criticism, here's something!
Do you see the _Decade?_ The _Decade's_ article on the
pictures in last week's number fairly brought me back to
town." He held his brush between his teeth and found the
place for her. "There! I don't know who did it, and it
was the first thing Miss Cardiff asked me when I put in
my appearance there yesterday, so she doesn't either,
though she writes a good deal for the _Decade_."

Kendal had gone back to work, and did not see that Elfrida
was making an effort of self-control, with a curious
exaltation in her eyes. "I--I have seen this," she said
presently.

"Capital, isn't it!"

"Miss Cardiff asked you who wrote it?" she repeated
hungrily.

"Yes; she commissioned me to find out, and if he was
respectable to bring him there. Her father said I was to
bring him anyway. So I don't propose to find out. The
Cardiffs have burned their fingers once or twice already
handling obscure genius, and I won't take the
responsibility. But it's adorably savage, isn't it?"

"Do you really like it!" she asked. It was her first
taste of success, and the savor was very sweet. But she
was in an agony of desire to tell him, to tell him
immediately, but gracefully, delicately, that she wrote
it. How could she say it, and yet seem uneager, indifferent?
But the occasion must not slip. It was a miserable
moment.

"Immensely," he replied.

"Then," she said, with just a little more significance
in her voice than she intended, "you would rather not
find out?"

He turned and met her shining eyes. She smiled, and he
had an instant of conviction. "You," he exclaimed--"you
did it! Really?"

She nodded, and he swiftly reflected upon what he had
said. "Now criticise!" she begged impatiently.

"I can only advise you to follow your own example," he
said gravely. "It's rather exuberantly cruel in places."

"Adorably savage, you _said!_"

"I wasn't criticising then. And I suppose," he went on,
with a shade of awkwardness, "I ought to thank you for
all the charming things you put in about me."

"Ah!" she returned, with a contemptuous pout and shrug,
"don't say that--it's like the others. But," she clinched
it notwithstanding, and rather quickly, "will you take
me to see Miss Cardiff? I mean," she added, noting his
look of consternation, "will you ask her if I may come?
I forget--we are in London."

At this moment the boy from below-stairs knocked with
tea and cakes, little Italian cakes in iced jackets and
paper boats. "Yes, certainly--yes, I will," said Kendal,
staring at the tray, and trying to remember when he had
ordered it; "but it's your plain duty to make us both
some tea, and to eat as many of these pink-and-white
things as you possibly can. They seem to have come down
from heaven for you."

They ate and drank and talked and were merry for quite
twenty minutes. Elfrida opened her notebook and threatened
absurdities of detail for publication in the _Age_; he
defied her, tilted his chair back, put his feet on a
packing-box, and smoked a cigarette. He placed all the
studies he had made after she left Paris before her, and
as she finished the last but one of the Italian cakes,
they discussed these in the few words from which they
both drew such large and satisfying meanings as do not
lie at all in the vocabulary of outsiders. Elfrida felt
the keenest pleasure of her whole life in the knowledge
that Kendal was talking to her more seriously, more
carefully, because of that piece of work in the _Decade_;
the consciousness of it was like wine to her, freeing
her thoughts and her lips. Kendal felt, too, that the
plane of their relations was somehow altered. He was not
sure that he liked the alteration. Already she had grown
less amusing, and the real _camaraderie_ which she
constantly suggested her desire for he could not, at the
bottom of his heart, truly tolerate with a woman. He was
an artist, but he was also an Englishman, and he told
himself that he must not let her get into the way of
coming there. He felt an obscure inward irritation, which
he did not analyze, that she should talk so well and be
so charming personally at the same time.

Elfrida, still in the flush of her elation, was putting
on her gloves to go, when the room resounded to a masterful
double rap. The door almost simultaneously opened far
enough to disclose a substantial gloved hand upon the
outer handle, and in the tones of confident aggression
which habit has given to many middle-aged ladies, a
feminine voice said, "May we come in?"

It is not probable that Lady Halifax had ever been so
silently, surely, and swiftly damned before. In the
fraction of an instant that followed Kendal glanced at
the dismantled tray and felt that the situation was
atrocious. He had just time to put his foot upon his
half-smoked cigarette, and to force a pretence of unconcern
into his "Come in! Come in!" when the lady and her daughter
entered with something of unceremoniousness.

"Those are appalling stairs--" Lady Halifax observed
Elfrida, and came to an instant's astonished halt--"of
yours, Mr. Kendal, appalling!" Then as Kendal shook hands
with Miss Halifax she faced round upon him in a manner
which said definitely, "Explain!" and behind her sharp
good-natured little eyes Kendal read, "If it is possible!"
He looked at Elfrida in the silent hope that she would
go, but she appeared to have no such intention. He was
pushed to a momentary wish that she had got into the
cupboard, which he dismissed, turning a deeper brick
color as it came and went. Elfrida was looking up with
calm inquiry, buttoning a last glove-button.

"Lady Halifax," he said, seeing nothing else for it,
"this is Miss Bell, from America, a fellow-student in
Paris. Miss Bell has deserted art for literature, though,"
he went on bravely, noting an immediate change in his
visitor's expression, and the fact that her acknowledgment
was quite as polite as was necessary. "She has done me
the honor to look me up this afternoon in the formidable
character of a representative of the press."

Lady Halifax looked as if the explanation was quite
acceptable, though she reserved the right of criticism.

Elfrida took the first word, smiling prettily straight
into Lady Halifax's face.

"Mr. Kendal pretends to be very much frightened," she
said, with pleasant, modest coolness, and looked at
Kendal.

"From America," Lady Halifax repeated, as if for the
comfort of the assurance. "I am sure it is a great
advantage nowadays to have been brought up in America."
This was quite as delicately as Lady Halifax could possibly
manage to inform Kendal that she understood the situation.
Miss Halifax was looking absorbedly at Elfrida. "Are you
really a journalist?" Miss Halifax asked. "How nice! I
didn't know there were any ladies on the London press,
except, of course, the fashion-papers, but that isn't
quite the same, is it?"

When Miss Halifax said "How nice!" it indicated a strong
degree of interest. The threads of Miss Halifax's
imagination were perpetually twisting themselves about
incidents that had the least unusualness, and here was
a most unusual incident, with beauty and genius thrown
in! Whether she could approve it or not in connection
with Kendal, Miss Halifax would decide afterward. She
told herself that she ought to be sufficiently devoted
to Kendal to be magnanimous about his friends. Her six
years of seniority gave her the candor to confess that
she was devoted to Kendal--to his artistic personality,
that is, and to his pictures. While Kendal turned a still
uncomfortable back upon them, showing Lady Halifax what
he had done since she had been there last--she was always
pitiless in her demands for results--Elfrida talked a
little about "the press" to Miss Halifax. Very lightly
and gracefully she talked about it, so lightly and
gracefully that Miss Halifax obtained an impression which
she has never lost, that journalism for a woman had ideal
attractions, and privately resolved if ever she were
thrown upon the bleak world to take it up. As the others
turned toward them again Elfrida noticed the
conscience-stricken glance which Kendal gave to the
tea-tray.

"Oh," she said, with a slight enhancement of her pretty
Parisian gurgle, "I am very guilty--you must allow me to
say that I am very guilty indeed! Mr. Kendal did not
expect to see me to-day, and in his surprise he permitted
me to eat up all the cakes! I am so sorry! Are there no
more--anywhere?" she asked Kendal, with such a gay
pretence of tragic grief that they all laughed together.
She went away then, and while they waited for a fresh
supply of tea, Kendal did his best to satisfy the curiosity
of the Halifaxes about her. He was so more than thankful
she had convinced them that she was a person about whom
it was proper to be curious.




CHAPTER XII.

It was Arthur Rattray who generally did the art criticism
for the _Decade_, and when a temporary indisposition
interfered between Mr. Rattray and this duty early in
May, he had acquired so much respect for Elfrida's opinion
in artistic matters, and so much good-will toward her
personally, that he wrote and asked her to undertake it
for him with considerable pleasure. This respect and
regard had dawned upon him gradually, from various sources,
in spite of the fact that the Latin Quarter article had
not been a particular success. That, to do Miss Bell
justice, as Mr. Rattray said in mentioning the matter to
the editor-in-chief, was not so much the fault of the
article as the fault of their public. Miss Bell wrote
the graphic naked truth about the Latin Quarter. Even
after Rattray had sent her copy back to be amended for
the third time, she did not seem able to realize that
their public wouldn't stand _unions libres_ when not
served up with a moral purpose--that no artistic apology
for them would do. In the end, therefore, Rattray was
obliged to mutilate the article himself, and to neutralize
it here and there. He was justified in taking the trouble,
for it was matter they wanted, on account of some expensive
drawings of the locality that had been in hand a long
time. Even then the editor-in-chief had grumbled at its
"tone," though the wrath of the editor-in-chief was
nothing to Miss Bell's. Mr. Rattray could not remember
ever having had before a conversation with a contributor
which approached in liveliness or interest the one he
sustained with Miss Bell the day after her copy appeared.
If he imparted some ideas of expediency, he received some
of obligation to artistic truth, which he henceforth
associated with Elfrida's expressive eyes and what he
called her foreign accent. On the whole, therefore, the
conversation was agreeable, and it left him with the
impression that Miss Bell, under proper guidance, could
very possibly do some fresh unconventional work for the
_Age_. Freshness and unconventionality for the _Age_ was
what Mr. Rattray sought as they seek the jewel in the
serpent's head in the far East. He talked to the
editor-in-chief about it, mentioning the increasing lot
of things concerning women that had to be touched, which
only a woman could treat "from the inside," and the
editor-in-chief agreed sulkily, because experience told
him it was best to agree with Mr. Rattray, that Miss Bell
should be taken on the staff on trial, at two pounds a
week. "But the paper doesn't want a female Zola," he
growled; "you can tell her that." Rattray did not tell
her precisely that, but he explained the situation so
that she quite understood it, the next afternoon when he
called to talk the matter over with her. He could not
ask her to come to the office to discuss it, he said,
they were so full up, they had really no place to receive
a lady. And he apologized for his hat, which was not a
silk one, in the uncertain way of a man who has heard of
the proprieties in these things. She made him tea with
her samovar, and she talked to him about Parisian journalism
and the Parisian stage in a way that made her a further
discovery to him; and his mind, hitherto wholly devoted
to the service of the _Illustrated Age_, received an
impetus in a new direction. When he had gone Elfrida
laughed a little, silently, thinking first of this, for
it was quite plain to her. Then, contrasting what the
_Age_ wanted her to write with her ideal of journalistic
literature, she stated to Buddha that it was "worse than
_panade_." "But it means two pounds a week, Buddha," she
said; "fifty francs! Do you understand that? It means
that we shall be able to stay here, in the world--that
I shall not be obliged to take you to Sparta. You don't
know, Buddha, how you would _loathe_ Sparta! But understand,
it is at _that_ price that we are going to despise
ourselves for a while--not for the two pounds!"

And next day she was sent to report a distribution of
diplomas to graduating nurses by the Princess of Wales.

Buddha was not an adequate confidant. Elfrida found him
capable of absorbing her emotions indefinitely, but his
still smile was not always responsive enough, so she made
a little feast, and asked Golightly Ticke to tea, the
Sunday after the Saturday that made her a salaried member
of the London press. Golightly's felicitations were
sincere and spasmodically sympathetic, but he found it
impossible to conceal the fact that of late the world
had not smiled equally upon him. In spite of the dramatic
fervor with which the part of James Jones, a solicitor's
clerk, had been rendered every evening, the piece at the
Princess's had to come to an unprofitable close, the
theatre had been leased to an American company, Phyllis
had gone to the provinces, and Mr. Ticke's abilities were
at the service of chance. By the time he had reached
his second cigarette he was so sunk in cynicism that
Elfrida applied herself delicately to discover these
facts. Golightly made an elaborate effort to put her off.
He threw his head back in his chair and watched the faint
rings of his cigarette curling into indistinguishability
against the ceiling, and said he was only the dust that
blew about the narrow streets of the world, and why should
she care to know which way the wind took him! Lighting
his third, he said, as bitterly as that engrossment would
permit him, that the sooner--puff--it was over--puff--the
sooner--puff--to sleep; and when the lighting was quite
satisfactorily accomplished he laughed harshly. "I shall
think," said Elfrida earnestly, "if you do not tell me
how things are with you, since they are bad, that you
are not a true Bohemian--that you have scruples."

"You know better--at least I hope you do--than to charge
me with that," Golightly returned, with an inflection
full of reproachful meaning. "I--I drank myself to sleep
last night, Miss Bell. When the candle flickered out I
thought that it was all over--curious sensation. This
morning," he added, looking through his half-closed
eyelashes with sardonic stage effect, "I wished it had
been."

"Tell me," Elfrida insisted gently; and looking attentively
at his long, thin fingers Mr. Ticke then told her. He
told her tersely, it did not take long; and in the end
he doubled up his hand and pulled a crumpled cuff down
over it. "To me," he said, "a thing like that represents
the worst of it. When I look at that I feel capable of
crime. I don't know whether you'll understand, but the
consideration of what my finer self suffers through
sordidness of this sort sometimes makes me think that to
rob a bank would be an act of virtue."

"I understand," said Elfrida.

"Washerwomen as a class are callous. I suppose the alkalies
they use finally penetrate to their souls. I said to
mine last Thursday, 'But I must be clean, Mrs. Binkley!'
and the creature replied, 'I don't see at all, Mr. Ticks'
--she has an odious habit of calling me Mr. Ticks--'why
you shouldn't go dirty occasional.' She seemed to think
she had made a joke!"

"They live to be paid," Elfrida said, with hard philosophy,
and then she questioned him delicately about his play.
Could she induce him to show it to her, some day? Her
opinion was worth nothing really--oh no, absolutely
nothing--but it would be a pleasure if Golightly were
_sure_ he didn't mind.

Golightly found a difficulty in selecting phrases repressive
enough to be artistic, in which to tell her that he would
be delighted.

When Mr. Ticke came in that evening he found upon his
dressing-table a thick square envelope addressed to him
in Elfrida's suggestive hand. With his fingers and thumb
he immediately detected a round hardness in one corner,
and he took some pains to open the letter so that nothing
should fall out. He postponed the pleasure of reading it
until he had carefully extracted the two ten-shilling
pieces, divested them of their bits of tissue-paper, and
put them in his waistcoat pocket. Then he held the letter
nearer to the candle and read: "I have thought about this
for a whole hour. You must believe, please, that it is
no vulgar impulse. I acknowledge it to be a very serious
liberty, and in taking it I rely upon not having
misinterpreted the scope of the freedom which exists
between us. In Bohemia--our country--one may share one's
luck with a friend, _n'est ce pas?_ I will not ask to be
forgiven."

"Nice girl," said Mr. Golightly Ticke, taking off his
boots. He went to bed rather resentfully conscious of
the difference there was in the benefactions of Miss
Phyllis Fane.

Shortly after this Mr. Ticke's own luck mended, and on
two different occasions Elfrida found a bunch of daffodils
outside her door in the morning, that made a mute and
graceful acknowledgment of the financial bond Mr. Ticke
did not dream of offering to materialize in any other
way. He felt his gratitude finely; it suggested to him
a number of little directions in which he could make
himself useful to Miss Bell, putting aside entirely the
question of repayment. One of these resolved itself into
an invitation from the Arcadia Club, of which Mr. Ticke
was a member in impressive arrears, to their monthly
_soiree_ in the Landscapists' rooms in Bond Street. The
Arcadia Club had the most liberal scope of any in London,
he told Elfrida, and included the most interesting people.
Painters belonged to it, and sculptors, actors, novelists,
musicians, journalists, perhaps above all, journalists.
A great many ladies were members, Elfrida would see, and
they were always glad to welcome a new personality. The
club recognized how the world had run to types, and how
scarce and valuable personalities were in consequence.
It was not a particularly conventional club, but he would
arrange that, if Elfrida would accept his escort. Mrs.
Tommy Morrow should meet her in the dressing-room, as a
concession to the prejudices of society.

"Mrs. Tommy is a brilliant woman in her way," Mr. Ticke
added; "she edits the _Boudoir_--I might say she created
the _Boudoir_. They call her the Queen of Arcadia. She
has a great deal of manner."

"What does Mr. Tommy Morrow do?" Elfrida asked. But
Golightly could not inform her as to Mr. Tommy Morrow's
occupation.

The rooms were half full when they arrived, and as the
man in livery announced them, "Mrs. Morrow, Miss Bell,
and Mr. Golightly Ticke," it seemed to Elfrida that
everybody turned simultaneously to look. There was nobody
to receive them; the man in livery published them, as it
were, to the company, which she felt to be a more effective
mode of entering society, when it was the society of the
arts. She could not possibly help being aware that a
great many people were looking in her direction over Mrs.
Tommy Morrow's shoulder. Presently it became obvious that
Mrs. Tommy Morrow was also aware of it. The shoulder was
a very feminine shoulder, with long lines curving forward
into the sulphur-colored gown that met them not too
prematurely. Mrs. Tommy Morrow insisted upon her shoulder,
and upon her neck, which was short behind but long in
front in effect, and curved up to a chin which was somewhat
too persistently thrust forward. Mrs. Tommy had a pretty
face with an imperious expression. "Just the face," as
Golightly murmured to Elfrida, "to run the _Boudoir_."
She seemed to know everybody, bowed right and left with
varying degrees of cordiality, and said sharply, "No shop
to-night!" to a thin young woman in a high black silk,
who came up to her exclaiming, "Oh, Mrs. Morrow, that
function at Sandringham has been postponed." Presently
Mrs. Morrow's royal progress was interrupted by a gentleman
who wished to present Signer Georgiadi, "the star of the
evening," Golightly said hurriedly to Elfrida. Mrs. Morrow
was very gracious, but the little fat Italian with the
long hair and the drooping eyelids was atrociously
embarrassed to respond to her compliments in English. He
struggled so violently that Mrs. Morrow began to smile
with a compassionate patronage which turned him a
distressing terra-cotta. Elfrida looked on for a few
minutes, and then, as one of the group, she said quietly
in French, "And Italian opera in England, how do you find
it, Signor?"

The Italian thanked her with every feature of his expressive
countenance, and burst with polite enthusiasm into his
opinion of the Albert Hall concerts. When he discovered
Elfrida to be an American, and therefore not specially
susceptible to praise of English classical interpretations,
he allowed himself to become critical, and their talk
increased in liveliness and amiability.

Mrs. Morrow listened with an appreciative air for a few
minutes, playing with her fan; then she turned to Mr.
Ticke.

"Golightly," she said acidly, "I am dying of thirst You
shall take me to the refreshment table."

So the star of the evening was abandoned to Elfrida, and
finding in her a refuge from the dreadful English tongue,
he clung to her. She was so occupied with him in this
character that almost all the other distinguished people
who attended the _soiree_ of the Arcadia Club escaped
her. Golightly asked her reproachfully afterward how he
could possibly have pointed them out to her, absorbed as
she was--and some of them would have been so pleased to
be introduced to her! She met a few notwithstanding;
they were chiefly rather elderly unmarried ladies, who
immediately mentioned to her the paper they were connected
with, and one or two of them, learning that she was a
newcomer, kindly gave her their cards, and asked her to
come and see them any second Tuesday. They had indefinite
and primitive ideas of doing their hair, and they were
certainly _mal tournee_; but Elfrida saw that she made
an impression on them--that they would remember her and
talk of her; and seeing that, other things became less
noteworthy. She felt that these ladies were more or less
emancipated, on easy terms with the facts of life, free
from the prejudices that tied the souls of people she
saw shopping at the Stores, for instance. That, and a
familiarity with the exigencies of copy at short notice,
was discernible in the way they talked and looked about
them, and the readiness with which they produced a pencil
to write the second Tuesday on their cards. Almost every
lady suggested that she might have decorated the staff
of her journal an appreciable number of years, if that
supposition had not been forbidden by the fact that the
feminine element in journalism is of comparatively recent
introduction. Elfrida wondered what they occupied themselves
with before. It did not detract from her sense of the
success of the evening--Golightly Ticke went about telling
everybody that she was the new American writer on the
_Age_--to feel herself altogether the youngest person
present, and manifestly the most effectively dressed, in
her cloudy black net and daffodils. Her spirits rose with
a keen instinct that assured her she would win, if it
were only a matter of a race with _them_. She had never
had the feeling, in any security, before; it lifted her
and carried her on in a wave of exhilaration. Golightly
Ticke, taking her in turn to the buffet for lemonade and
a sandwich, told her that he knew she would enjoy it--she
must be enjoying it, she looked in such capital form. It
was the first time she had been near the buffet; so she
had not had the opportunity of observing how important
a feature the lemonade and sandwiches formed in the
entertainment of the evening--how persistently the
representatives of the arts, with varying numbers of
buttons off their gloves, returned to this light
refreshment.

Elfrida thanked Mrs. Tommy Morrow very sweetly for her
chaperonage in the cloak-room when the hour of departure
came. "Well," said Mrs. Morrow, "you can say you have
seen a characteristic London literary gathering."

"Yes, thanks!" said Elfrida; and then, looking about her
for a commonplace, "How much taller the women seem to be
than the men," she remarked.

"Yes," returned Mrs. Tommy Morrow, "Du Maurier drew
attention to that in _Punch_, some time ago."




CHAPTER XIII.

Janet Cardiff, running downstairs to the drawing-room
from the top story of the house in Kensington Square with
the knowledge that a new American girl, who wrote very
clever things about pictures, awaited her there, tried
to remember just what sort of description John Kendal
had given of her visitor. Her recollection was vague as
to detail; she could not anticipate a single point with
certainty, perhaps because she had not paid particular
attention at the time. She had been given a distinct
impression that she might expect to be interested, however,
which accounted for her running downstairs. Nothing
hastened Janet Cardiff's footsteps more than the prospect
of anybody interesting. She and her father declared that
it was their great misfortune to be thoroughly respectable,
it cut them off from so much. It was in particular the
girl's complaint against their life that humanity as they
knew it was rather a neutral-tinted, carefully woven
fabric too largely "machine-made," as she told herself,
with a discontent that the various Fellows of the Royal
Society and members of the Athenaeum Club, with whom the
Cardiffs were in the habit of dining, could hardly have
thought themselves capable of inspiring. It seemed to
Janet that nobody crossed their path until his or her
reputation was made, and that by the time people had made
their reputations they succumbed to them, and became
uninteresting.

She told herself at once that nothing Kendal could have
said would have prepared her for this American, and that
certainly nothing she had seen or read of other Americans
did. Elfrida was standing beside the open window looking
out. As Janet came in a breeze wavered through and lifted
the fluffy hair about her visitor's forehead, and the
scent of the growing things in the little square came
with it into the room. She turned slowly, with grave wide
eyes and a plaintive indrawing of her pretty underlip,
and held out three full-blown gracious Marechal Neil
roses on long slender stems. "I have brought you these,"
she said, with a charming effect of simplicity, "to make
me welcome. There was no reason, none whatever, why I
should be welcome, so I made one. You will not be
angry--perhaps?"

Janet banished her conventional "Very glad to see you"
instantly. She took the roses with a quick thrill of
pleasure. Afterward she told herself that she was not
touched, not in the least, she did not quite know why;
but she freely acknowledged that she was more than amused.

"How charming of you!" she said. "But I have to thank
you for coming as well. Now let us shake hands, or we
shan't feel properly acquainted." Janet detected a
half-tone of patronage in her voice, and fell into a rage
with herself because of it. She looked at Elfrida sharply
to note a possible resentment, but there was none. If
she had looked a trifle more sharply she might have
observed a subtler patronage in the little smile her
visitor received this commonplace with; but, like the
other, she was too much occupied in considering her
personal effect. She had become suddenly desirous that
it should be a good one.

Elfrida went on in the personal key. "I suppose you are
very tired of hearing such things," she said, "but I owe
you so much."

This was not quite justifiable, for Miss Cardiff was only
a successful writer in the magazines, whose name was very
familiar to other people who wrote in them, and had a
pleasant association for the reading public. It was by
no means fame; she would have been the first to laugh at
the magniloquence of the word in any personal connection.
For her father she would accept a measure of it, and only
deplored that the lack of public interest in Persian made
the measure small. She had never confessed to a soul how
largely she herself was unacquainted with his books, and
how considerably her knowledge of her father's specialty
was covered by the opinion that Persian was a very
decorative character. She could not let Elfrida suppose
that she thought this anything but a politeness.

"Oh, thanks--impossible!" she cried gaily. "Indeed, I
assure you it is months since I heard anything so
agreeable," which was also a departure from the strictest
verity.

"But truly! I'm afraid I am very clumsy," Elfrida added,
with a pretty dignity, "but I should like to assure you
of that."

"If you have allowed me to amuse you now and then for
half an hour it has been very good of you," Janet returned,
looking at Miss Bell with rather more curious interest
than she thought it polite to show. It began to seem to
her, however, that the conventional side of the occasion
was not obvious from any point of view. "You are an
American, aren't you?" she asked. "Mr. Kendal told me
so. I suppose one oughtn't to say that one would like
to be an American. But you have such a pull! I know I
should like living there."

Elfrida gave herself the effect of considering the matter
earnestly. It flitted, really, over the surface of her
mind, which was engaged in absorbing Janet and the room,
and the situation.

"Perhaps it is better to be born in America than in--most
places," she said, with a half glance at the prim square
outside. "It gives you a point of view that is--splendid."
In hesitating this way before her adjectives, she always
made her listeners doubly attentive to what she had to
say. "And having been deprived of so much that you have
over here, we like it better, of course, when we get it,
than you do. But nobody would live in constant deprivation.
No, you wouldn't like living there. Except in New York,
and, oh, I should say Santa Barbara, and New Orleans
perhaps, the life over there is--infernal."

"You are like a shower-bath," said Janet to herself; but
the shower-bath had no palpable effect upon her. "What
have we that is so important that you haven't got?" she
asked.

"Quantities of things." Elfrida hesitated, not absolutely
sure of the wisdom of her example. Then she ventured it.
"The picturesqueness of society--your duchesses and your
women in the green-grocers' shops." It was not wise, she
saw instantly.

"Really? It is so difficult to understand that duchesses
are interesting--out of novels; and the green-grocers'
wives are a good deal alike, too, aren't they?"

"It's the contrast; you see our duchesses were
green-grocers' wives the day before yesterday, and our
green-grocers' wives subscribe to the magazines. It's
all mixed up, and there are no high lights anywhere. You
move before us in a sort of panoramic pageant," Elfrida
went on, determined to redeem her point, "with your Queen
and Empress of India--she ought to be riding on an
elephant, oughtn't she?--in front, and all your princes
and nobles with their swords drawn to protect her. Then
your Upper Classes and your Upper Middle Classes walking
stiffly two and two; and then your Lower Middle Classes
with large families, dropping their h's; and then your
hideous people from the slums. And besides," she added,
with prettily repressed enthusiasm, "there is the shadowy
procession of all the people that have gone before, and
we can see that you are a good deal like them, though
they are more interesting still. It is very pictorial."
She stopped suddenly and consciously, as if she had said
too much, and Janet felt that she was suggestively
apologized to.

"Doesn't the phenomenal squash make up for all that?"
she asked. "It would to me. I'm dying to see the phenomenal
squash, and the prodigious water-melon, and--"

"And the falls of Niagara?" Elfrida put in, with the
faintest turning down of the corners of her mouth. "I'm
afraid our wonders are chiefly natural, and largely
vegetable, as you say."

"But they are wonders. Everything here has been measured
so many times. Besides, haven't you got the elevated
railway, and a statue of Liberty, and the 'Jeanne d'Arc,'
and W. D. Howells! To say nothing of a whole string of
poets--good gray poets that wear beards and laurels, and
fanciful young ones that dance in garlands on the back
pages of the _Century_. Oh, I know them all, the dear
things! And I'm quite sure their ideas are indigenous to
the soil."

Elfrida let her eyes tell her appreciation, and also the
fact that she would take courage now, she was gaining
confidence. "I'm glad you like them," she said. "Howells
would do if he would stop writing about virtuous
sewing-girls, and give us some real _romans psychologiques_.
But he is too much afraid of soiling his hands, that
monsieur; his _betes humaines_ are always conventionalized,
and generally come out at the end wearing the halo of
the redeemed. He always reminds me of Cruikshank's picture
of the ghost being put out by the extinguisher in the
'Christmas Carol.' His genius is the ghost, and
conventionality is the extinguisher. But it _is_ genius,
so it's a pity."

"It seems to me that Howells deals honestly with his
materials," Janet said, instinctively stilling the jar
of Elfrida's regardless note. She was so pretty, this
new creature, and she had such original ways. Janet must
let her talk about _romans psychologiques_, or worse
things, if she wanted to. "To me he has a tremendous
appearance of sincerity, psychological and other. But do
you know, I don't think the English or American people
are exactly calculated to reward the sort of vivisection
you mean. The _bete_ is too conscious of his moral fibre
when he's respectable, and when he isn't respectable he
doesn't commit picturesque crimes, he steals and boozes.
I dare say he's bestial enough, but pure unrelieved filth
can't be transmuted into literature, and as a people
we're perfectly devoid of that extraordinary artistic
nature that it makes such a foil for in the Latins. That
is really the only excuse the naturalists have."

"Excuse!" Elfrida repeated, with a bewildered look. "You
had Wainwright," she added hastily.

"_Nous nous en felicitons!_ We've got him still--in Madame
Tussaud's," cried Janet "He poisoned for money in cold
blood--not exactly an artistic vice! Oh, _he_ won't
do!"--she laughed triumphantly--"if he did write charming
things about the Renaissance! Besides, he illustrates my
case; among us he was a phenomenon, like the elephant-headed
man. Phenomena are for the scientists. You don't mean
to tell me that any literature that pretends to call
itself artistic has a right to touch them."

By this time they had absolutely forgotten that up to
twenty minutes ago they had never seen each other before.
Already they had mutely and unconsciously begun to rejoice
that they had come together; already each of them promised
herself the exploration of the other's nature, with the
preliminary idea that it would be a satisfying, at least
an interesting process. The impulse made Elfrida almost
natural, and Janet perceived this with quick
self-congratulation. Already she had made up her mind
that this manner was a pretty mask which it would be her
business to remove.

"But--but you're not in it!" Elfrida returned. "Pardon
me, but you're not _there_, you know. Art has no ideal
but truth, and to conventionalize truth is to damn it In
the most commonplace material there is always truth, but
here they conventionalize it out of all--"

"Oh," cried Janet, "we're a conventional people, I assure
you, Miss Bell, and so are you, for how could you change
your spots in a hundred years? The material here is
conventional. Daudet couldn't have written of us. Our
wicked women are too inglorious. Now Sapho--"

Miss Cardiff stopped at the ringing of the door-bell.
"Oh," she said, "here is my father. You will let me give
you a cup of tea now, won't you?" The maid was bringing
in the tray. "I should like you to meet my father."

Lawrence Cardiff's grasp was on the door-handle almost
as she spoke. Seeing Elfrida, he involuntarily put up
his hand to settle the back of his coat collar--these
little middle-aged ways were growing upon him--and shook
hands with her as Janet introduced them, with that courtly
impenetrable agreeableness that always provoked curiosity
about him in strangers, and often led to his being taken
for somebody more important than he was, usually somebody
in politics. Elfrida saw that he was quite different from
her conception of a university professor with a reputation
in Persian and a clever daughter of twenty-four. He was
straight and slender for one thing; he had gay inquiring
eyes, and fair hair just beginning to show gray where
the ends were brushed back; and Elfrida immediately became
aware that his features were as modern and as mobile as
possible. She had a moment of indecision and surprise
--indecision as to the most effective way of presenting
herself, and surprise that it should be necessary to
decide upon a way. It had never occurred to her that a
gentleman who had won scientific celebrity by digging
about Arabic roots, and who had contributed a daughter
like Janet to the popular magazines, could claim anything
of her beyond a highly respectful consideration. In
moments when she hoped to know the Cardiffs well she had
pictured herself doing little graceful acts of politeness
toward this paternal person--acts connected with his
spectacles, his _Athenian_, his foot-stool But apparently
she had to meet a knight and not a pawn.

She was hardly aware of taking counsel with herself; and
the way she abandoned her hesitations, and what Janet
was inwardly calling her Burne-Jonesisms, had all the
effect of an access of unconsciousness. Janet Cardiff
watched it with delight. "But why," she asked herself in
wonder, "should she have been so affected--if it was
affectation--with _me?_" She would decide whether it was
or was not afterward, she thought. Meanwhile she was glad
her father had thought of saying something nice about the
art criticism in the _Decade_; he was putting it so much
better than she could, and it would do for both of them.

"You paint yourself, I fancy?" Mr. Cardiff was saying
lightly. There was no answer for an instant, or perhaps
three. Elfrida was looking down. Presently she raised
her eyes, and they were larger than ever, and wet.

"No," she said, a little tensely. "I have tried"
--"trr-hied," she pronounced it--"but--but I cannot."

Lawrence Cardiff looked at his teaspoon in a considering
way, and Janet reflected, not without indignation, that
this was the manner in which people who cared for them
might be expected to speak of the dead. But Elfrida cut
short the reflection by turning to her brightly. "When
Mr. Cardiff came in," she said, "you were telling me why
a Daudet could not write about the English. It was
something about Sapho--"

Mr. Cardiff looked up curiously, and Janet, glancing in
her father's direction, reddened. Did this strange young
woman not realize that it was impossible to discuss beings
like "Sapho" with one's father in the room? Apparently
not, for she went on: "It seems to me it is the exception
in that class, as in all classes, that rewards intere

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