er on the outskirts of Paris. They took a room.... The next
day the man did not get up. And since then Dahlia has bowed her head to
the yoke and works all day long for a poor monthly wage in an office
where the walls press upon her like a vice. "It's to keep up my father's
spirits," she said with a shake of her head when I saw her the second
time.

I shall never forget the first time. I had come in a little later than
usual, and probably more tired, too. I did not even think of lighting
the lamp, the dusk was unreal ... heavens!... a vision took shape
between the threshold and the shadows, scarcely daring.... There was a
brow set in pale gold, the delicate blur of a face, eyes like a
thousand forget-me-nots; between two young arms the strait, retiring
modesty of the angels, and their light movements also. She drew nearer.
"We have made a cake, the sort we make at home, let's divide." She
disappeared. Her present remained behind on my table....

In her thin linen dress this evening, with a whiff of paradise about
her, Dahlia seems to be enveloped in a pink illumination. She smiles on
everybody as one must smile at happiness when one catches a glimpse of
it.

"Your beautiful red dress," she assures Trude, gently clasping the soft
spindles of her hands.

How can Trude remain simple and genuinely Puritanical beneath her
trappings of beaded crimson plush and cuirass of some hodgepodge of gold
caught in at the hips. I fancy she is too simple for finery to add to
her personality. Real or imitation the fineries give way; it is she who
adorns them. Whatever she wears is sanctified and comes to resemble her,
everything except her threefold name, Gertrude, Trude, Trudel.

She has the peculiar brilliance of the Russians, sombre, subterranean,
almost undefinable. Whatever she does, whether she laughs, or is
excited, or talks with fire of ordinary things, she always has a finger
lifted in the air and her wide gaze raised Christ-like. She has the
mouth of an evangelist. Her irises set in clear white have glints of
jet. She wears the glossy foliage of her black locks straight back from
her forehead, an intense forehead crowning her like a diadem.... What
other woman would dare the supreme immodesty of displaying a bare
forehead? What woman would gain by doing it? The strange thing is, Trude
is beautiful only by a kind of miracle; the least little bit more, and
her cheeks would stick out over the cheekbones of a Tartar; the least