in the freedom of her life. Their only trouble was the furnishing.
Mildred did not like to ask Harold for any more money, and credit was
difficult to obtain. But even this difficulty was surmounted: and they
found an upholsterer who agreed to furnish the apartment they had
taken in the Rue Hauteville for five thousand francs, payable in
monthly instalments. To have to pay five hundred francs every month
would keep them very short of money for the first year, but that could
not be helped. They would get on somehow; and the first dinner in the
half-furnished dining-room, with the white porcelain stove in the
corner, seemed to them the most delicious they had ever tasted.
Josephine, their servant, was certainly an excellent cook; and so
obliging; they could find no fault with her. But the upholsterer was
dilatory, and days elapsed before he brought the chairs that were to
match the sofa; nearly every piece of drapery was hung separately, and
they had given up hope of the _etageres_ and girondoles. For a long
while a grand piano was their principal piece of furniture. Though she
never touched it, Miss Brand could not live without, a grand piano.
'What's the use?' she'd say. 'I've only to open the score to remember
--to hear Rubenstein play the passage.'

When they were _tout a fait bien installees,_ they had friends to
dinner, and they were especially proud of M. Daveau's company. Mildred
liked this large, stout man. There was something strangely winning in
his manner; a mystery seemed to surround him, and it was impossible
not to wish to penetrate this mystery. Besides, was he not their
master, the lord of the studio? Though a large, fat man, none was more
illusive, more difficult to realise, harder to get on terms of
intimacy with. These were temptations which appealed to Mildred and
she had determined on his subduction. But the wily Southerner had read
her through. Those little brown eyes of his had searched the bottom of