not made the slightest progress."
"I don't at all agree with you," Bernardine answered rather peevishly.
"I think I am getting on very well."
"You are no judge," he said. "To begin with, you cannot focus properly.
You have a crooked eye. I have told you that several times!"
"You certainly have," she put in. "You don't let me forget that."
"Your photograph of that horrid little danseuse whom you like so much,"
he said, "is simply abominable. She looks like a fury. Well, she may be
one for all I know, but in real life she has not the appearance of one."
"I think that is the best photograph I have done," Bernardine said,
highly indignant. She could tolerate his uppishness about subjects of
which she knew far more than he did; but his masterfulness about a
subject of which she really knew nothing was more than she could bear
with patience. He had not the tact to see that she was irritated.
"I don't know about it being the best," he said; "unless it is the best
specimen of your inexperience. Looked at from that point of view, it
does stand first!"
She flushed crimson with temper.
"Nothing is easier than to make fun of others," she said fiercely. "It
is the resource of the ignorant."
Then, after the fashion of angry women, having said her say, she stalked
away. If there had been a door to bang, she would certainly have banged
it. However, she did what she could under the circumstances: she pushed
a curtain roughly aside, and passed into the concert-room, where every
night of the season's six months, a scratchy string orchestra entertained
the Kurhaus guests. She left the Disagreeable Man standing in the passage.
"Dear me," he said thoughtfully. And he stroked his chin. Then he trudged
slowly up to his room.
"Dear me," he said once more.
Arrived in his bedroom, he began to read. But after a few minutes he
shut his book, took the lamp to the looking-glass and brushed his hair.
Then he put on a black coat and a white silk tie. There was a speck of
dust on the coat. He carefully removed that, and then extinguished the
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