" he said, "I'll enter my protest against the
foolishness of doing it this way by refusing to post the
letter." Mr. Ticke was tremendously in earnest, and threw
it dramatically upon the table. "You may be a George
Eliot or a--an Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but in these
days you want every advantage, Miss Bell, and women who
succeed understand that."

Elfrida's face was still enigmatic, so enigmatic that
Mr. Ticke felt reluctantly constrained to stop. "I must
pursue the even tenor of my way," he said airily, looking
at his watch. "I've an engagement to lunch at one. _Don't_
ask me to post that article, Miss Bell. And by the way,"
as he turned to go, "I haven't a smoke about me. Could
you give me a cigarette?"

"Oh yes," said Elfrida, without looking at him, "as many
as you like," and she pushed an open box toward him; but
she had an absent, considering air that did not imply
any idea of what she was doing.

"Thanks, only one. Or perhaps two--there now, two! How
good these little Hafiz fellows are! Thanks awfully.
Good-bye!"

"Good-bye," said Elfrida, with her eyes on the packet
addressed to the editor of the _Consul_; and Mr. Golightly
Ticke tripped downstairs. She had not looked at him again.

She sat thinking, thinking. She applied herself first to
stimulate the revolt that rose within her against Golightly
Ticke's advice--his intolerably, no, his forgetfully
presumptuous advice. She would be just to him: he talked
so often to women with whom such words would carry weight,
for an instant he might fail to recognize that she was
not one of those. It was absurd to be angry, and not at
all in accordance with any theory of life that operated
in Paris. Instinctively, at the thought of a moral
indignation upon such slender grounds in Paris she gave
herself the benefit of a thoroughly expressive Parisian
shrug. And how they understood, success in Paris! Beasts!

And yet it was all in the game. It was a matter of skill,
of superiority, of puppet-playing. One need not soil
one's hands--in private one could always laugh. She
remembered how Nadie had laughed when three bunches of
roses from three different art critics had come in
together--how inextinguishably Nadie had laughed. It was
in itself a, success of a kind. Nadie had no scruples,
except about her work. She went straight to her end,
believing it to be an end worth arriving at by any means.
And now Nadie would presently be _tres en vue--tres en
vue!_ After a