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.
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