Cleopatras of legend and history. In features she looked exactly what
she was, well-bred and well-born. Beauty she also had, but it was the
cold beauty of northern winter nights. It compelled admiration rather
than invited it. Spiritually, Elsa was asleep. The fire was there,
the gift of loving greatly, only it smoldered, without radiating even
the knowledge of its presence. Men loved her, but in awe, as one loves
the marbles of Phidias. She knew no restraint, and yet she had passed
through her stirless years restrained. She was worldly without being
more than normally cynical; she was rich without being either frugal or
extravagant. Her independence was inherent and not acquired. She had
laid down certain laws for herself to follow; and that these often
clashed with the laws of convention, which are fetish to those who
divide society into three classes, only mildly amused her. Right from
wrong she knew, and that sufficed her.

Her immediate relatives were dead; those who were distantly related
remained so, as they had no part in her life nor she in theirs.
Relatives, even the best of them, are practically strangers to us.
They have their own affairs and interests, and if these touch ours it
is generally through the desire to inherit what we have. So Elsa went
her way alone. From her father she had inherited a remarkable and
seldom errant judgment. To her, faces were generally book-covers, they
repelled or attracted; and she found large and undiminishing interest
in the faculty of pressing back the covers and reading the text. Often
battered covers held treasures, and often the editions de luxe were
swindles. But in between the battered covers and the exquisite
Florentine hand-tooling there ranged a row of mediocre books; and it
was among these that Elsa found that her instinct was not wholly
infallible, as will be seen.