and jerseys and sea-boots, and
Barbara's keen eye detected the fact that Liosha, for freedom's sake,
had cut a foot or so off the bottom of her skirt without taking the
trouble to hem up the edge, which, now frayed, hung about her calves in
disgraceful fringes.

"I think you were wrong, my dear," said I. "The poor thing looks
anything but utterly miserable."

"I'm sure I was right about her hands and skin," she maintained.

"Well, it's her own skin."

"More's the pity," Barbara retorted.

What on earth she meant, I do not know; but, as usual, she had the last
word.

The middle of September found us back in England, and shortly afterwards
Doria returned also, and resumed her lonely life in the Adrian-haunted
flat. But by and by she grew restless, complaining that no one but her
father, of whose society she had wearied, was in town, and went off on a
series of country-house visits. The flat, I suspected, for all its
sacred memories, was dull without Jaffery. She still maintained her
unrelenting attitude, and spoke scornfully of him; but once or twice she
asked when this mad voyage would be over, thereby betraying curiosity
rather than indifference.

Meanwhile the autumn publishing season was in full swing. Wittekind's
list of new novels in its deep black framing border stared at you from
the advertisement pages of every periodical you picked up, and so did
the list of every other publisher. Day after day Doria's eyes fell on
this announcement of Wittekind, and day after day her indignation
swelled at the continued omission of "The Greater Glory." All these
nobodies, these ephemeral scribblers, were being thrust flamboyantly on
public notice and her Adrian, the great Sun of the firm, was allowed to
remain in eclipse. For what purpose had he lived and died if his memory
was treated with this dark ingratitude? I strove to reason with her.
Adrian's book had been prodigally advertised in the spring. It had sold
enormously. It was still selling. There was no need to advertise it any
longer. Besides, advertisement cost money, and poor Wittekind had to do
his duty by his other authors. He had to push his new wares.
"Tradesman!" cried Doria. If he wasn't, I remonstrated, if he wasn't a
tradesman in a certain sense, an expert in the art of selling books, how
could Adrian's novels have attained their wide circulation? It was to
his interest to increase that circulation as much as possible. Why not
let him run his very succe