composition of her spirit. As she conceived it, in this life either things
were or they were not; and as a rule they uncompromisingly were not: one
couldn't have everything.

She was not happy, it would be stretching the truth to say she was content,
but she was resigned, she was patient, she waited not altogether without
confidence....

All the same, sometimes, as she sat, day in day out, on her high stool,
looking down on familiar aspects of life's fermentation as it manifests in
public restaurants, or peering out of the windows to catch tantalizing
glimpses of its freer, ampler, and--alas!--more recondite phases--sometimes
Sofia wondered whether there were not grimly cynic innuendo in those three
words which the mystery of choice had affixed to the window-panes and
graven so deep into her soul.

CAFÉ DES EXILES

For surely she was in exile there, an exile from all the fun and frolic
and, fury of life, marooned in weary isolation, on a high stool, in a
frowsty table d'hôte, in the living heart of London.



II

MASKS AND FACES


Quite naturally she became acquainted with Faces....