ived on
equal terms, those about whom nothing was known, and those about whom
too much was known. The strange mixture and the contrasts of character
afforded endless scope for observation and amusement, and Bernardine,
who was daily becoming more interested in her surroundings, felt that
she would have been sorry to have exchanged her present abode for the
English quarter. The amusing part of it was that the English people in
the Kurhaus were regarded by their compatriots in the English quarter
as sheep of the blackest dye! This was all the more ridiculous because
with two exceptions--firstly of Mrs. Reffold, who took nearly all her
pleasures with the American colony in the Grand Hotel; and secondly,
of a Scotch widow who had returned to Petershof to weep over her
husband's grave, but put away her grief together with her widow's
weeds, and consoled herself with a Spanish gentleman--with these two
exceptions, the little English community in the Kurhaus was most humdrum
and harmless, being occupied, as in the case of the Disagreeable Man,
with cameras and cheese-mites, or in other cases with the still more
engrossing pastime of taking care of one's ill-health, whether real or
fancied: but yet, an innocent hobby in itself and giving one absolutely
no leisure to do anything worse: a great recommendation for any pastime.

This was not Bernardine's occupation: it was difficult to say what she
did with herself, for she had not yet followed Robert Allitsen's advice
and taken up some definite work: and the very fact that she had no such
wish, pointed probably to a state of health which forbade it. She,
naturally so keen and hard-working, was content to take what the hour
brought, and the hour brought various things: chess with the Swedish
professor, or Russian dominoes with the shrivelled-up little Polish
governess who always tried to cheat, and who clutched her tiny winnings
with precisely the same greediness shown by the Monte Carlo female
gamblers. Or the hour brought a stroll with the French danseuse and her
poodle, and a conversation about the mere trivialities of life, which a
year or two, or even a few months ago, Bernardine would have condemned
as beneath contempt, but, which were now taking their rightful place in
her new standard of importances. For some natures learn with greater
difficulty and after greater delay than others, that the real
importances of our existence are the nothingnesses of every-day life,
the noth