"You would write far better than I, probably," said the girl. "I know so little of life—only what I feel. You know everything——"
"Dear girl, you are better as you are. When you know everything, you will have discovered that the world is full of sawdust, and the people stuffed with shavings, and no one worth writing about—then, where will your fine books be?"
"Have you ever thought of writing?"
"Often," she began to laugh. "And when I discover a real good man in the world I shall burst into glory in a novel. But no such man exists. He died when the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair. Here is tea. We'll drown my pessimism in the cream-bowl, shall we?"
She went to the tea-table. The maid drew up the window-shades, letting the lovely rose-lights of late afternoon into the room. It was a real woman's room, full of flowers and photographs, and cushions, and piles of magazines and weeklies everywhere. There were no wonderful pictures on the walls, or valuable china in cases. Only a few well-arranged native curios, a good piano, and the kind of things people from home gather about them when they are sojourning in a foreign land. As Poppy followed to the tea-table, her eye caught a full-length photograph on the wall over the writing-desk, and she stayed a moment to look. It was a woman in her presentation gown—two long, lovely eyes smiled contentedly on the world. Underneath, in a woman's writing, were the words: "To Clem, from Mary."
It was the regal-milky-woman—Mrs. Capron. Mrs. Portal turned round from her tea-cups.
"Ah! everyone looks at that photograph! She is very beautiful. The remarkable thing is that she is good, too. That is remarkable, isn't it? I'm sure if I had a face like that I should go to my own head and be a perfect divil."
"Who is she?" asked Poppy, still before the smiling picture.
"My friend, Mrs. Capron."
"Is that her name written there?"