"This place is too grand for me," Lorelei objected.
"Oh, offer your own price for Gertie's flat if you like it. They're crazy for tenants. If you didn't want a furnished place you could get in rent-free. They have to fill up these buildings to sell them. I've lived for months without paying a cent, and always in a new apartment. As soon as my lease was up and the owner wanted to renew I'd move to another house that wasn't full. It's cheaper than hotels—if you want to save money."
Lorelei was surprised to find her friend's quarters not only richly, but lavishly furnished. The floors were covered with rugs of the deepest hue and richest luster; the furniture of the front room into which she was first ushered was of an inlaid foreign pattern, of which she could not guess the name or period. There was a player-piano to match the furniture, and a cabinet of rolls. Near by stood a specially made Victrola with an extensive selection of records. There were bronze lamps, ravishing bits of bric-a-brac, lace curtains of which she could judge the quality, and heavy hangings, sheathed now in their summer coverings. The decorations of the room were harmonious and bespoke a reckless disregard of cost. A fluffy Japanese spaniel with protruding eyes and distorted visage capered deliriously at its mistress's feet.
But the objects that intrigued the visitor most strongly were several paintings. They were of a kind she had seldom seen, and in the afternoon light one stood out with particularly startling effect. It was a dusky landscape; there was a stream, a meadow edge, trees just growing black against a dying sunset, a herd of cattle coming out of the west. Before this picture Lorelei paused, staring with wide eyes of wonder.
Lilas flung her hat carelessly into a chair, lit a cigarette from a Tiffany humidor, then turned with the spaniel in her arms and, beholding her guest with rapt, upturned face, remarked, with a laugh:
"Looks the real thing, doesn't it?"
"Oh—it's wonderful—so clean and cool and quiet! I've seen cattle in
Vale that looked just like those, when I went barefoot in the grass."
"Some Dutchman painted it—his name's in the corner. He's dead now, I believe. It used to hang in some museum—I forget where. I like pictures of women best, but—" She shrugged and left her sentence unfinished. "There's a dandy in my bedroom, although it didn't cost half as much as that barn-yard thing. The frame's a foot wide and covered with solid gold."
"I had no idea you lived like this." Lorelei peered through a pair of French doors and into a perfectly appointed library, with a massive mahogany table, deep lounging-chairs, a writing-desk, and a dome-crowned reading-lamp.
"My study," Lilas laughed, shortly. "That's where I improve my mind—not. The books are deadly. Now come; Hitchy Koo must have dinner ready. His name isn't Hitchy Koo, but it sounds like it, and he's 'the cutest little thing; got the cutest little swing.'" She moved down the hall humming the chorus of the senseless popular song from which she had quoted.