iss Blair, to her
astonishment she no longer seemed as deformed as she had been on the
train. She fitted into this dark, rich, Eastern splendor as a
misformed bronze idol might have done. Miss Blair gave a little,
shrewd laugh at Maria's gaze, then she spoke to another maid who had
appeared when the door opened.

"This is my friend Miss Ackley, Louise," she said. "Take her to the
west room, and call down and have a supper tray sent to her." Then
she said to Maria that she must be tired, and would prefer going at
once to her room. "I am tired myself," said Miss Blair. "Such persons
as I do not move about the face of the earth with impunity. There is
a wear and tear of the soul and the body when the body is so small
that it scarcely holds the soul. You will have your supper sent up,
and your breakfast in the morning. At ten o'clock I will send
Adelaide to bring you to my room." She bade Maria good-night, and the
girl followed the maid, stepping into an elevator on one side of the
vestibule. She had a vision of Miss Blair's tiny figure with Adelaide
moving slowly upward on the other side.

Maria reflected that she was glad that she had her toilet articles
and her night-dress at least in her satchel. She felt the maid
looking at her, although her manner was very much like Adelaide's.
She wondered what she would have thought if she had not at least had
her simple necessaries for the night when she followed her into a
room which seemed to her fairly wonderful. It was a white room. The
walls were hung with paper covered with sheafs of white lilies; white
fur rugs--wolf-skins and skins of polar bears--were strewn over the
polished white floor. All the toilet articles were ivory and the
furniture white, with decorations of white lilies and silver. In one
corner stood a bed of silver with white draperies. Beyond, Maria had
a glimpse of a bath in white and silver, and a tiny dressing-room
which looked like frost-work. When the maid left her for a moment
Maria stood and gazed breathless. She realized a sort of delight in
externals which she had never had before. The externals seemed to be
farther-reaching. There was something about this white, virgin room
which made it seem to her after her terror on the train like heaven.
A sense of absolute safety possessed her. It was something to have
that, although she was doing something so tremendous to her
self-consciousness that she felt like a criminal, and the ache in her
heart for th