CHAPTER II

THE GORILLA

Of all her friends Olga Teherny was the one who amused and entertained
Hermia the most. She was older than Hermia, much more experienced and
to tell the truth quite as mad in her own way as Hermia was. There
were times when even Hermia could not entirely approve of her, but she
forgave her much because she was herself and because, no matter what
depended upon it, she could not be different if she tried. Olga
Egerton had been born in Russia, where her father had been called as a
consulting engineer of the railway department of the Russian
Government. Though American born, the girl had been educated
according to the European fashion and at twenty had married and lost
the young nobleman whose name she bore, and had buried him in his
family crypt in Moscow with the simple fortitude of one who is well
out of a bad bargain. But she had paid her toll to disillusion and
the age of thirty found her a little more careless, a little more
worldly-wise than was necessary, even in a cosmopolitan. Her comments
spared neither friend nor foe and Hilda Ashhurst, whose mind grasped
only the obvious facts of existence, came in for more than a share of
the lady's invective.

Indeed, Markam, the painter, seemed this morning to be the only
luminous spot on the Countess Olga's social horizon and by the time
the car had reached lower Fifth Avenue she had related most of the
known facts of his character and career including his struggle for
recognition in Europe, his revolutionary attitude toward the Art of
the Academies as well as toward modern society, and the consequent and
self-sought isolation which deprived him of the intercourse of his