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