helli to herself. "What manners and what dirty
nails! _C'est un homme epouvantable_, but very useful. But for him I
should have been prancing round this place all night, looking for
rooms."

She dragged her trunk towards her, and proceeded to unpack the
collection of gaudy dresses that she had bought with so much pride at
the _Bon Marche_ in Paris, and which were all in the worst possible
taste.

Perhaps she had been impelled to a choice of lively colours as being
symbolical in their brightness of the new life on which she was about
to embark. There was a green cloth rendered still more hideous by
being inlet with medallions of pink silk, a cornflower blue with much
silver braid already becoming tarnished in the few times it had been
worn, and a mauve and orange adorned with flamboyant Eastern embroidery.

When she had tumbled them all out they showed a vivid patch of
ill-assorted tints. Arithelli shivered as she sat back on her heels on
the floor, and looked round the sordid room. The excitement of her
arrival had worn off, and the element of depression reigned supreme in
her mind. Certainly the apartment, which was supposed to be a
bed-sitting-room, but which was merely a bedroom, was not enlivening to
contemplate. No carpet, dirty boards, a large four-poster bed canopied
with faded draperies against the wall facing the window. There was a
feeble attempt at a washstand in a small alcove on the left, furnished
with the usual doll's house crockery affected on the Continent,--no
wardrobe and no dressing table.

It all looked hopeless, she told herself disgustedly. Surely there
were better rooms to be found in Barcelona for forty _pesetas_ a week!
Either lodgings must be very dear or else Emile Poleski had meant to
take a large commission for his trouble in finding them!

She was stiff and tired after the long journey and want of proper food,
and every trifle took upon itself huge dimensions. She was daintily
fastidious as to cleanliness, and everything seemed to her filthy
beyond belief. The universal squalor customary in Spanish life had
come as an unpleasant shock.

When she started from Paris she had conjured visions of a triumphal
entry into her new career. Now she felt rather frightened and
desperately lonely, and the horrible room appeared like a bad omen for
the future. But, she reflected, after all, things might have been
worse. She had found one friend already. Certainly he had
disagreeab