at after
the first confusion of a multitude of tongues in the
irrelevant Parisian key Elfrida found herself reasonably
fluent and fairly at ease. The illumined jargon of the
atelier staid with her naturally; she never forgot a word
or a phrase, and in two months she was babbling and
mocking with the rest.

She lived alone; she learned readily to do it on eighty
francs a month, and her appartement became charming in
three weeks. She divined what she should have there, and
she managed to get extraordinary bargains in mystery and
history out of the dealers in such things, so cracked
and so rusty, so moth-eaten and of such excellent color,
that the escape of the combined effect from _banalite_
was a marvel. She had a short, sharp struggle with her
American taste for simple elegance in dress, and overthrew
it, aiming, with some success, at originality instead.
She found it easy in Paris to invest her striking
personality in a distinctive costume, sufficiently becoming
and sufficiently odd, of which a broad soft felt hat,
which made a delightful brigand of her, and a Hungarian
cloak formed important features. The Hungarian cloak
suited her so extremely well that artistic considerations
compelled her to wear it occasionally, I fear, when other
people would have found it uncomfortably warm. In nothing
that she said or did or admired or condemned was there
any trace of the commonplace, except, perhaps, the desire
to avoid it; it had become her conviction that she owed
this to herself. She was thoroughly popular in the atelier,
her _petits soupers_ were so good, her enthusiasms so
generous, her drawing so bad. The other pupils declared
that she had a head _divinement tragique_, and for those
of them she liked she sometimes posed, filling impressive
parts in their weekly compositions. They all knew the
little appartement in the Rue Porte Royale, more or less
well according to the favor with which they were received.
Nadie Palicsky perhaps knew it best--Nadie Palicsky and
her friend Monsieur Andre Vambery, who always accompanied
her when, she came to Elfrida's in the evening, finding
it impossible to allow her to be out alone at night,
which Nadie confessed agreeable to her vanity, but a bore.

Elfrida found it difficult in the beginning to admire
the friend. He was too small for dignity, and Nadie's
inspired comparison of his long black hair to "_serpents
noirs_" left her unimpressed. Moreover she thought she
detected ab