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.