she would accept a measure of it, and only
deplored that the lack of public interest in Persian made
the measure small. She had never confessed to a soul how
largely she herself was unacquainted with his books, and
how considerably her knowledge of her father's specialty
was covered by the opinion that Persian was a very
decorative character. She could not let Elfrida suppose
that she thought this anything but a politeness.

"Oh, thanks--impossible!" she cried gaily. "Indeed, I
assure you it is months since I heard anything so
agreeable," which was also a departure from the strictest
verity.

"But truly! I'm afraid I am very clumsy," Elfrida added,
with a pretty dignity, "but I should like to assure you
of that."

"If you have allowed me to amuse you now and then for
half an hour it has been very good of you," Janet returned,
looking at Miss Bell with rather more curious interest
than she thought it polite to show. It began to seem to
her, however, that the conventional side of the occasion
was not obvious from any point of view. "You are an
American, aren't you?" she asked. "Mr. Kendal told me
so. I suppose one oughtn't to say that one would like
to be an American. But you have such a pull! I know I
should like living there."

Elfrida gave herself the effect of considering the matter
earnestly. It flitted, really, over the surface of her
mind, which was engaged in absorbing Janet and the room,
and the situation.

"Perhaps it is better to be born in America than in--most
places," she said, with a half glance at the prim square
outside. "It gives you a point of view that is--splendid."
In hesitating this way before her adjectives, she always
made her listeners doubly attentive to what she had to
say. "And having been deprived of so much that you have
over here, we like it better, of course, when we get it,
than you do. But nobody would live in constant deprivation.
No, you wouldn't like living there. Except in New York,
and, oh, I should say Santa Barbara, and New Orleans
perhaps, the life over there is--infernal."

"You are like a shower-bath," said Janet to herself; but
the shower-bath had no palpable effect upon her. "What
have we that is so important that you haven't got?" she
asked.

"Quantities of things." Elfrida hesitated, not absolutely
sure of the wisdom of her example. Then she ventured it.
"The picturesqueness of society--your duchesses and your
women in the green-grocers' shops." It was not