She found more than once that she was learning to measure people by a standard different from her former one; not by what they had done or been, but by what they had suffered.  But such a change as this does not come suddenly, though, in a place like Petershof, it comes quickly, almost unconsciously.

She became immensely interested in some of the guests; and there were curious types in the Kurhaus.  The foreigners attracted her chiefly; a little Parisian danseuse, none too quiet in her manner, won Bernardine’s fancy.

“I so want to get better, cherie,” she said to Bernardine.  “Life is so bright.  Death:  ah, how the very thought makes one shiver!  That horrid doctor says I must not skate; it is not wise.  When was I wise?  Wise people don’t enjoy themselves.  And I have enjoyed myself, and will still.”

“How can you go about with that little danseuse?” the Disagreeable Man said to Bernardine one day.  “Do you know who she is?”

“Yes,” said Bernardine; “she is the lady who thinks you must be a very ill-bred person because you stalk into meals, with your hands in your pockets.  She wondered how I could bring myself to speak to you.”

“I dare say many people wonder at that,” said Robert Allitsen rather peevishly.

“Oh no,” replied Bernardine; “they wonder that you talk to me.  They think I must either be very clever or else very disagreeable.”

“I should not call you clever,” said Robert Allitsen grimly.

“No,” answered Bernardine pensively.  “But I always did think myself clever until I came here.  Now I am beginning to know better.  But it is rather a shock, isn’t it?”

“I have never experienced the shock,” he said.

“Then you still think you are clever?” she asked.

“There is only one man my intellectual equal in Petershof, and he is not here any more,” he said gravely.  “Now I come to remember, he died.  That is the worst of making friendships here; people die.”

“Still, it is something to be left king of the intellectual world,” said Bernardine.  “I never thought of you in that light.”

There was a sly smile about, her lips as she spoke, and there was the ghost of a smile on the Disagreeable Man’s face.

“Why do you talk with that horrid Swede?” he said suddenly.  “He is a wretched low foreigner.  Have you heard some of his views?”

“Some of them,” answered Bernardine cheerfully.  “One of his views is really amusing:  that it is very rude of you to read the newspaper during meal-time; and he asks if it is an English custom.  I tell him it depends entirely on the Englishman, and the Englishman’s neighbour!”

So she too had her raps at him, but always in the kindest way.

He had a curious effect on her.  His very bitterness seemed to check in its growth her own bitterness.  The cup of poison of which he himself had drunk deep, he passed on to her.  She drank of it, and it did not poison her.  She was morbid, and she needed cheerful companionship.  His dismal companionship and his hard way of looking at life ought by rights to have oppressed her.  Instead of which she became less sorrowful.