"Ma foi! So it's that, is it? Then I've heard something about you. I know the Manager pretty well. He said you were un peu bizarre."
"Peut être plus qu'un peu," Arithelli retorted quickly. "I see you think he's right."
Arrived at the lodgings she sat still, waiting in the cab with the same apparent indifference while Emile wrangled with the landlady. At length he came back to her: "You had better try these for a week," he said. "They're forty pesetas. She will want the rent in advance as you have no recommendation." For the first time Arithelli seemed disturbed.
"I'm afraid I can't pay it. I'm to have five pounds a week at the Hippodrome, but of course I can't ask for that in advance. I had a second-class ticket out here, and now I've only got four-and-sixpence left."
She held out a small blue satin bag, displaying a few coins. "Perhaps I'd better go and explain to the Manager." Emile shrugged his shoulders. Obviously the girl was very young.
"On the whole I think you'd better not," he said. "You know nothing about either myself or the Manager, and it seems you've got to trust one of us so it may as well be me."
When he had arranged matters he departed, saying casually, "I'll come in again to-night about nine o'clock to see how you are getting on. Don't do anything insane, such as wandering about the streets, because you feel dull. It won't hurt you to put up with the dulness for a bit. You'll have plenty of excitement if you're going to live in Barcelona."
"Tiens!" said Arithelli to herself. "What manners and what dirty nails! C'est un homme épouvantable, 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 Marché 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.