Miss Howe pushed the portière aside with a curved hand and gracefully
separated fingers; it was a staccato movement, and her body followed it
after an instant's poise of hesitation, head thrust a little forward,
eyes inquiring, and a tentative smile, although she knew precisely who
was there. You would have been aware at once that she was an actress.
She entered the room with a little stride, and then crossed it quickly,
the train of her morning gown--it cried out of luxury with the cheapest
voice--taking folds of great audacity, as she bent her face in its loose
mass of hair over Laura Filbert, sitting on the edge of a bamboo sofa,
and said--

"You poor thing! Oh, you _poor_ thing!"

She took Laura's hand as she spoke, and tried to keep it; but the hand
was neutral, and she let it go. "It is a hand," she said to herself, in
one of those quick reflections that so often visited her ready-made,
"that turns the merely inquiring mind away. Nothing but passion could
hold it."

Miss Filbert made the conventional effort to rise, but it came to
nothing, or to a mere embarrassed accent of their greeting. Then her
voice showed this feeling to be merely superficial, made nothing of it,
pushed it to one side.

"I suppose you cannot see the foolishness of your pity," she said. "Oh,
Miss Howe, I am happier than you are--much happier." Her bare feet, as
she spoke, nestled into the coarse Mirzapore rug on the floor, and her
eye lingered approvingly upon an Owari vase three foot high, and thick
with the gilded landscape of Japan which stood near it, in the cheap
magnificence of the squalid room.