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 parties. You'll be entertained everywhere. Everybody wants to see you, but dinner would be queer. Is it fin de siècle to give dinners in Paris?

Again Ella was puzzled by Lou's use of this phrase, but she replied, Well, one does.

A little later Lou escorted the Countess to her bedroom, a chamber papered in an ivory paper, sprinkled with blue flowers. A few pictures hung on wires from the white moulding. The bathroom, with its zinc tub, opened from a landing two or three steps down the hall stairs, but a wash-stand held a blue bowl and pitcher for use in emergency, and half a dozen towels, embroidered with elaborate P's were suspended on a brass rod above this stand. A table, the bureau, the upholstered chairs, the bed were all of a light, machine-carved, polished maple, and the bed was covered with a lace spread, while a bolster supported the pillows, hidden beneath lace pillow-shams.

Left to herself, Ella rearranged her hair, washed her face and hands, and changed her dress. She put on a frock of pale lilac batiste, which exposed her arms to the elbow. Then, as the bell for supper had not yet sounded, once more she looked about the room. She examined a picture by F. S. Church in which a fanciful maiden in a filmy gown fed two bears and a crane from a chafing-dish. On the table lay a few books; among them she noted a novel by Gertrude Atherton: Patience Sparhawk. She recalled that she had met Mrs.