e.

At that the lady aborigine began to laugh. Straightway I forgot the
outlandish gown, forgot the cannon-ball beads, forgot the sparse fringe,
forgave the absence of "lines." Such a voice! A lilting, melodious
thing. She broke into a torrent of speech, with bewildering gestures,
and I saw that her hands were exquisitely formed and as expressive as
her voice. Her German was the musical tongue of the Viennese, possessing
none of the gutturals and sputterings. When she crowned it with the gay
little trilling laugh my views on the language underwent a lightning
change. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to see her open
the flat, silver case that dangled at the end of the cannon-ball chain,
take out a cigarette, light it, and smoke it there in that little German
dining room. She wore the most gracefully nonchalant air imaginable as
she blew little rings and wreaths, and laughed and chatted brightly with
her husband and the other men. Occasionally she broke into French, her
accent as charmingly perfect as it had been in her native tongue.
There was a moment of breathless staring on the part of the respectable
middle-class Frauen at the other tables. Then they shrugged their
shoulders and plunged into their meal again. There was a certain little
high-born air of assurance about that cigarette-smoking that no amount
of staring could ruffle.

Watching the new aborigines grew to be a sort of game. The lady
aborigine of the golden voice, and the ugly husband of the peaked chin
had a strange fascination for me. I scrambled downstairs at meal time in
order not to miss them, and I dawdled over the meal so that I need
not leave before they. I discovered that when the lady aborigine was
animated, her face was that of a young woman, possessing a certain
high-bred charm, but that when in repose the face of the lady aborigine
was that of a very old and tired woman indeed. Also that her husband
bullied her, and that when he did that she looked at him worshipingly.

Then one evening, a week or so after the appearance of the new
aborigines, there came a clumping at my door. I was seated at my
typewriter and the book was balkier than usual, and I wished that the
clumper at the door would go away.

"Come!" I called, ungraciously enough. Then, on second thought:
"Herein!"

The knob turned slowly, and the door opened just enough to admit the top
of a head crowned with a tight, moist German knob of hair. I searched my
memory to