'How do you do, dear,' said Cissy.

Mildred introduced her friends. They bowed, and shook hands with Mrs.
Fargus, but were at no pains to conceal their indifference to the drab
and dowdy little woman in the soiled sage green, and the glimmering
spectacles. 'What a complexion,' whispered Elsie the moment they were
outside the door. 'What's her husband like?' asked Cissy as they
descended the first flight. Mildred answered that Mr. Fargus suffered
from asthma, and hoped no further questions would be asked, so happy
was she in the sense of real emancipation from the bondage of home--so
delighted was she in the spectacle of the great boulevard, now radiant
with spring sunlight.

She wondered at the large blue cravats of idlers, sitting in cafes
freshly strewn with bright clean sand, at the aprons of the waiters,--
the waiters were now pouring out green absinthe,--at the little shop
girls in tight black dresses and frizzled hair, passing three together
arm in arm; all the boulevard amused and interested Mildred. It looked
so different, she said, from what it had done four hours before. 'But
none of us look our best at six in the morning,' she added laughing,
and her friends laughed too. Elsie and Cissy chattered of some project
to dine with Walter, and go to the theatre afterwards, and
incidentally Mildred learnt that Hopwood Blunt would not be in Paris
before the end of the week. But where was the studio? The _kiosques_
were now open, the morning papers were selling briskly, the roadway
was full of _fiacres_ plying for hire, or were drawn up in lines three
deep, the red waistcoated coachmen slept on their box-seats. But where
was the studio?

Suddenly they turned into an Arcade. The shops on either side were