Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/16

Rh little else, had so educated her eyes and her taste that a criant bit of furniture hurt her as the grating of a false quantity hurts a scholar. She knew the value of greys and creams and lavenders and olive greens and pale sea blues and dead gold and oriental blendings. She had to seat herself now in an arm-chair that was of a brightness and newness in magenta brocade that made her close her eyelids involuntarily to avoid the horror of it, as she took up some letters from female friends and wondered why they wrote them, and took up a tale of Zola's and threw it aside in disgust, and began to think that she would go to Algeria, since her doctors had agreed that her lungs would not bear the cold of Paris this winter.

Only there was no art in Algeria and there was plenty in Floralia, present and traditional, and so far as a woman of fashion can demean herself to think seriously of anything beyond dress and rivalry, she had in a way studied art of all kinds, languidly indeed and perhaps superficially, but still with some true understanding of it; for, although she had done her best, as