e book title upward on her lap for
every one to see.

"Oh yes," said Mrs. Brinkley, fanning herself. "Tourguenief. That man
gave me the worst quarter of an hour with his 'Lisa' that I ever had."

"That's the same as the 'Nichee des Gentilshommes', isn't it?" asked
Mrs. Pasmer, with the involuntary superiority of a woman who reads her
Tourguenief in French.

"I don't know. I had it in English. I don't build my ships to cross the
sea in, as Emerson says; I take those I find built."

"Ah! I was already on the other side," said Mrs. Pasmer softly. She
added: "I must get Lisa. I like a good heart-break; don't you? If that's
what gave you the bad moment."

"Heart-break? Heart-crush! Where Lavretsky comes back old to the scene
of his love for Lisa, and strikes that chord on the piano--well, I
simply wonder that I'm alive to recommend the book to you.

"Do you know," said Miss Cotton, very deferentially, "that your daughter
always made me think of Lisa?"

"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Pasmer, not wholly pleased, but gratified that she
was able to hide her displeasure. "You make me very curious."

"Oh, I doubt if you'll see more than a mere likeness of temperament,"
Mrs. Brinkley interfered bluntly. "All the conditions are so different.
There couldn't be an American Lisa. That's the charm of these Russian
tragedies. You feel that they're so perfectly true there, and so
perfectly impossible here. Lavretsky would simply have got himself
divorced from Varvara Pavlovna, and no clergyman could have objected to
marrying him to Lisa."

"That's what I mean by his pessimism," said Miss Cotton. "He leaves you
no hope. And I think that despair should never be used in a novel except
for some good purpose; don't you, Mrs. Brinkley?"

"Well," said Mrs. Brinkley, "I was trying to think what good purpose
despair could be put to, in a book or out of it."

"I don't think," said Mrs. Pasmer, referring to the book in her lap,
"that he leaves you altogether in despair here, unless you'd rather he'd
run off with Irene than married Tatiana."

"Oh, I certainly didn't wish that;" said Miss Cotton, in self-defence,
as if the shot had been aimed at her.

"The book ends with a marriage; there's no denying that," said Mrs.
Brinkley, with a reserve in her tone which caused Mrs. Pasmer to
continue for her--

"And marriage means happiness--in a book."

"I'm not sure that it does in this case. The time would come, after
Litvinof had told Tatiana every