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.
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