for contributions. It leaped with a fierce joy at the
picture of Janet reading these paragraphs, and knowing,
whether she gave or withheld her own approval, that the
world had pronounced in favor of Elfrida Bell. She wrote
the simple note with which she would send a copy to
Kendal, and somewhere in the book there would be things
which he would feel so exquisitely that--The cover should
have a French design and be the palest yellow. There was
a moment's silence while she thought of these things,
her knee clasped in her hands, her eyes blindly searching
the dull red squares of the Llassa prayer-carpet.

"Rattray," said Golightly, with a suddenness that made
both the others look up expectantly, "could Miss Bell do
her present work for the _Age_ anywhere?"

"Just now I think it's mostly book reviews--isn't it?--and
comments on odds and ends in the papers of interest to
ladies. Yes--not quite so well out of London; but I dare
say it could be done pretty much anywhere, reasonably
near."

"Then," replied Golightly Ticke, with a repressed and
guarded air, "I think I've got it."

CHAPTER XXIV.

Three days later a note from Miss Cardiff in Kensington
Square to Miss Bell in Essex Court, Fleet Street, came
back unopened. A slanting line in very violet ink along
the top read "_Out of town for the pressent. M. Jordan._"
Janet examined the line carefully, but could extract
nothing further from it except that it had been written
with extreme care, by a person of limited education and
a taste for color. It occurred to her, in addition, that
the person's name was probably Mary.

Elfrida's actions had come to have a curious importance
to Janet; she realized how great an importance with the
access of irritated surprise which came to her with, this
unopened note. In the beginning she had found Elfrida's
passionate admiration so novel and so sweet that her
heart was half won before they came, together in completer
intimacy, and she gave her new original friend a meed of
affection which seemed to strengthen as it instinctively
felt itself unreturned--at least in kind. Elfrida
retracted none of her admiration, and she added to it,
when she ceded her sympathy, the freedom of a fortified
city; but Janet hungered for more. Inwardly she cried
out for the something warm and human that was lacking to
Elfrida's feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself
with grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while
to pretend