too
late that she should have been dignified and reserved.

"How handsome Mrs. Pontellier looked!" said Madame Lebrun to her son.

"Ravishing!" he admitted. "The city atmosphere has improved her. Some
way she doesn't seem like the same woman."

XXI

Some people contended that the reason Mademoiselle Reisz always chose
apartments up under the roof was to discourage the approach of beggars,
peddlars and callers. There were plenty of windows in her little front
room. They were for the most part dingy, but as they were nearly always
open it did not make so much difference. They often admitted into the
room a good deal of smoke and soot; but at the same time all the light
and air that there was came through them. From her windows could be seen
the crescent of the river, the masts of ships and the big chimneys of
the Mississippi steamers. A magnificent piano crowded the apartment.
In the next room she slept, and in the third and last she harbored a
gasoline stove on which she cooked her meals when disinclined to descend
to the neighboring restaurant. It was there also that she ate, keeping
her belongings in a rare old buffet, dingy and battered from a hundred
years of use.

When Edna knocked at Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered,
she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in
mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed
all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the
face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely,
standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace
and the artificial bunch of violets on the side of her head.

"So you remembered me at last," said Mademoiselle. "I had said to
myself, 'Ah, bah! she will never come.'"

"Did you want me to come?" asked Edna with a smile.

"I had not thought much about it," answered Mademoiselle. The two had
seated themselves on a little bumpy sofa which stood against the wall.
"I am glad, however, that you came. I have the water boiling back there,
and was just about to make some coffee. You will drink a cup with
me. And how is la belle dame? Always handsome! always healthy! always
contented!" She took Edna's hand between her strong wiry fingers,
holding it loosely without warmth, and executing a sort of double theme
upon the back and palm.

"Yes," she went on; "I sometimes thought: 'She will never come. She
promised as those women in society