vented by covering
its walls with bad pictures.

He turned to the bookcase. Frida's library offered him an amazing
choice of polyglot fiction. It contained nearly all Balzac and the
elder Dumas, Tolstoi and Turgenieff, Bjoernsen and Ibsen, besides a
great deal of miscellaneous literature, chiefly Russian and
Norwegian. Here and there he came across some odd volumes of modern
Greek. A whole shelf was devoted to books of travel; grammars and
dictionaries made up the rest. Miss Tancred's taste in books was a
little outlandish, but it was singularly virile and robust. He had
been prepared to suspect her of a morbid pedantry, having known more
than one lady in her desperate case who found consolation in the
dead languages. But Miss Tancred betrayed no ghoulish appetites; if
she had a weakness for tongues, she had also the good taste to
prefer them living.

Durant was so much absorbed in these observations that he did not
hear her come into the room.

"Have you found anything you can read?" she asked.

"I've found a great deal that I can't read. You _do_ go in strong
for languages."

"That's nothing; my mother was a Russian, and Russians know every
language better than their own. I don't know more than seven besides
mine. And I can only read and write them. They will never be any use
to me."

"How can you tell what may be of use to you? Even Mrs. Fazakerly, or
I?" Durant was anxious to give a playful turn to that remarkable
discussion they once had; he thus hoped to set the tone for all
future conversations with Miss Tancred. "I admit that you can't live
on languages, they are not exactly safety-valves for the emotions;
nobody can swear in more than three of them at a time. I think
music's better. Instead of playing whist you ought to play Chopin."

"It's better to play whist well than Chopin badly."

"Better to rule in Hades than fool in the other place, you think?
Miss Tancred, you are as proud as Lucifer."

"I don't see that any good is got by murdering the masters."

"It saves some women from worse crimes, I believe. Why didn't you
take to sketching, then? _That_ only kills time."

Miss Tancred was splendid in her scorn. "Kill time with painting bad
pictures? I'd rather time killed me."

Ah, that was what he liked about her. She had not revenged herself
on Nature by making hideous caricatures of Nature's face; she did
not draw in milk-and-water colors, and she did not strum. She had
none of the exasperat