and partisans; for,
as I think I have said, Anne had inspired great attachment since her
earliest days. Why had she come home? they exclaimed. Why not, pray?
Had she done anything criminal that she was to be exiled? Did I
think it pleasant to live abroad on a small income? Even if she
could get on without her friends, could they do without her?

The tone of these questions annoyed me not a little when I heard them,
which was not for some time. Soon after Anne's arrival I, too, was
called away, and it was not until February that I returned and was
met by the carefully set piece--Anne the Victim.

With that ill-advised self-confidence of which I have already made
mention, I at once set about demolishing this picture. I told Anne's
friends, who were also mine, that she would thank them very little
for their attitude. I found myself painting her life abroad as a
delirium of intellect and luxury. I even found myself betraying
professional secrets and arguing with total strangers as to the
amount of her income.

Even in Montreal faint echoes of this state of things had reached me,
but not until I went to see Anne on my return did I get any idea of
their cause. She had taken a furnished apartment from a friend, in a
dreary building in one of the West Forties. Only a jutting front of
limestone and an elevator man in uniform saved it, or so it seemed
to me, from being an old-fashioned boarding house. Its windows, small,
as if designed for an African sun, looked northward upon a darkened
street. Anne's apartment was on the second floor, and the
requirements of some caryatids on the outside rendered her
fenestration particularly meager. Her friend, if indeed it were a
friend, had not treated her generously in the matter of furniture.
She had left nothing superfluous but two green glass jugs on the
mantelpiece, and had covered the chairs with a chintz, the
groundwork of which was mustard colour.

Another man who was there when I came in, who evidently had known
Anne in different surroundings, expressed the most hopeful view
possible when he said that doubtless it would all look charming when
she had arranged her own belongings.

Anne made a little gesture. "I haven't any belongings," she said.

I didn't know what she meant, perhaps merely a protest against the
tyranny of things, but I saw the effect her speech produced on her
auditor. Perhaps she saw it too, for presently she added: "Oh, yes!
I have one."

And she went aw