but you're not _there_, you know. Art has no ideal
but truth, and to conventionalize truth is to damn it In
the most commonplace material there is always truth, but
here they conventionalize it out of all--"

"Oh," cried Janet, "we're a conventional people, I assure
you, Miss Bell, and so are you, for how could you change
your spots in a hundred years? The material here is
conventional. Daudet couldn't have written of us. Our
wicked women are too inglorious. Now Sapho--"

Miss Cardiff stopped at the ringing of the door-bell.
"Oh," she said, "here is my father. You will let me give
you a cup of tea now, won't you?" The maid was bringing
in the tray. "I should like you to meet my father."

Lawrence Cardiff's grasp was on the door-handle almost
as she spoke. Seeing Elfrida, he involuntarily put up
his hand to settle the back of his coat collar--these
little middle-aged ways were growing upon him--and shook
hands with her as Janet introduced them, with that courtly
impenetrable agreeableness that always provoked curiosity
about him in strangers, and often led to his being taken
for somebody more important than he was, usually somebody
in politics. Elfrida saw that he was quite different from
her conception of a university professor with a reputation
in Persian and a clever daughter of twenty-four. He was
straight and slender for one thing; he had gay inquiring
eyes, and fair hair just beginning to show gray where
the ends were brushed back; and Elfrida immediately became
aware that his features were as modern and as mobile as
possible. She had a moment of indecision and surprise
--indecision as to the most effective way of presenting
herself, and surprise that it should be necessary to
decide upon a way. It had never occurred to her that a
gentleman who had won scientific celebrity by digging
about Arabic roots, and who had contributed a daughter
like Janet to the popular magazines, could claim anything
of her beyond a highly respectful consideration. In
moments when she hoped to know the Cardiffs well she had
pictured herself doing little graceful acts of politeness
toward this paternal person--acts connected with his
spectacles, his _Athenian_, his foot-stool But apparently
she had to meet a knight and not a pawn.

She was hardly aware of taking counsel with herself; and
the way she abandoned her hesitations, and what Janet
was inwardly calling her Burne-Jonesisms, had all the
effect of an access of unconsciou