no bridge by which
the significance of any work of art could be conveyed to her."

"Then, in the name of goodness, why does she bother?" gasped Imogen.
"She is pretty, wealthy, well-established; why should she bother?"

"That's what M. Roux has kept asking himself. I can't pretend to analyze
it. She reads papers on the Literary Landmarks of Paris, the Loves of
the Poets, and that sort of thing, to clubs out in Chicago. To Flavia
it is more necessary to be called clever than to breathe. I would give a
good deal to know that glum Frenchman's diagnosis. He has been
watching her out of those fishy eyes of his as a biologist watches a
hemisphereless frog."

For several days after M. Roux's departure Flavia gave an embarrassing
share of her attention to Imogen. Embarrassing, because Imogen had the
feeling of being energetically and futilely explored, she knew not for
what. She felt herself under the globe of an air pump, expected to yield
up something. When she confined the conversation to matters of general
interest Flavia conveyed to her with some pique that her one endeavor
in life had been to fit herself to converse with her friends upon those
things which vitally interested them. "One has no right to accept their
best from people unless one gives, isn't it so? I want to be able to
give--!" she declared vaguely. Yet whenever Imogen strove to pay her
tithes and plunged bravely into her plans for study next winter, Flavia
grew absent-minded and interrupted her by amazing generalizations or
by such embarrassing questions as, "And these grim studies really have
charm for you; you are quite buried in them; they make other things seem
light and ephemeral?"

"I rather feel as though I had got in here under false pretenses,"
Imogen confided to Miss Broadwood. "I'm sure I don't know what it is
that she wants of me."

"Ah," chuckled Jemima, "you are not equal to these heart to heart talks
with Flavia. You utterly fail to communicate to her the atmosphere of
that untroubled joy in which you dwell. You must remember that she gets
no feeling out of things herself, and she demands that you impart yours
to her by some process of psychic transmission. I once met a blind girl,
blind from birth, who could discuss the peculiarities of the Barbizon
school with just Flavia's glibness and enthusiasm. Ordinarily Flavia
knows how to get what she wants from people, and her memory is
wonderful. One evening I heard her giving Frau Lichtenfeld