u are feeling drowsy. You
say to yourself, 'Will that cornflour never be made? It seems to take
centuries."

"One could be more patient if it were being made for oneself," said
M. Lichinsky. "But at least, Fraeulein, your sister does not quarrel
with every one. You must be grateful for that mercy!"

Even as he spoke, a stout lady thrust herself into the reading-room.
She looked very hot and excited. She was M. Lichinsky's mother. She
spoke, with a whirlwind of Polish words. It is sometimes difficult to
know when these people are angry and when they are pleased. But there
was no mistake about Mme. Lichinsky. She was always angry. Her son rose
from the sofa and followed her to the door. Then he turned round to his
confederates, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Another quarrel!" he said hopelessly.

CHAPTER XV.

WHICH CONTAINS NOTHING.

"YOU may have talent for other things," Robert Allitsen said one day to
Bernardine, "but you certainly have no talent for photography. You have
not made the slightest progress."

"I don't at all agree with you," Bernardine answered rather peevishly.
"I think I am getting on very well."

"You are no judge," he said. "To begin with, you cannot focus properly.
You have a crooked eye. I have told you that several times!"

"You certainly have," she put in. "You don't let me forget that."

"Your photograph of that horrid little danseuse whom you like so much,"
he said, "is simply abominable. She looks like a fury. Well, she may be
one for all I know, but in real life she has not the appearance of one."

"I think that is the best photograph I have done," Bernardine said,
highly indignant. She could tolerate his uppishness about subjects of
which she knew far more than he did; but his masterfulness about a
subject of which she really knew nothing was more than she could bear
with patience. He had not the tact to see that she was irritated.

"I don't know about it being the best," he said; "unless it is the best
specimen of your inexperience. Looked at from that point of view, it
does stand first!"

She flushed crimson with temper.

"Nothing is easier than to make fun of others," she said fiercely. "It
is the resource of the ignorant."

Then, after the fashion of angry women, having said her say, she stalked
away. If there had been a door to bang, she would certainly have banged
it. However, she did what she could under the circumstances: she pushed
a curtain roughly aside, and p