with men.  Miss Thompkins insinuated at intervals that she flirted, but she had the sharpest contempt for flirtation, and as a practice put it on a level with embezzlement or arson.  Miss Thompkins, however, kept on insinuating.  Audrey regarded herself as decidedly wiser than Miss Thompkins.  Her opinions on vital matters changed almost weekly, but she was always absolutely sure that the new opinion was final and incontrovertible.  Her scorn of the old English Audrey, though concealed, was terrific.

And it is to be remembered that she was a widow.  She was never half a second late, now, in replying when addressed as “Mrs. Moncreiff.”  Frequently she thought that she in fact was a widow.  Widowhood was a very advantageous state.  It had a free pass to all affairs of interest.  It opened wide the door of the world.  It recked nothing of girlish codes.  It abolished discussions concerning conventional propriety.  Its chief defect, for Audrey, was that if she met another widow, or even a married woman, she had to take heed lest she stumbled.  Fortunately, neither widows nor wives were very prevalent in the Quarter.  And Audrey had attained skill in the use of the state of widowhood.  She told no more infantile perilous tales about husbands who ate peas with a knife.  In her thankfulness that the tyrannic Rosamund had gone to Germany, and that Madame Piriac had vanished back into unknown Paris, Audrey was at pains to take to heart the lesson of a semi-hysterical blunder.

She descended the dark, dusty oak stairs utterly content.  And at the door of the gloomy den of the concierge the concierge’s wife was standing.  She was a new wife, the young mate of a middle-aged husband, and she had only been illuminating the den (which was kitchen, parlour, and bedroom in a space of ten feet by eight) for about a month.  She was plump and pretty, and also she was fair, which was unusual for a Frenchwoman.  She wore a striped frock and a little black apron, and her yellow hair was waved with art.  Audrey offered her the key of the studio with a smile, and, as Audrey expected, the concierge’s wife began to chatter.  The concierge’s wife loved to chatter with Anglo-Saxon tenants, and she specially enjoyed chattering with Audrey, because of the superior quality of Audrey’s French and of her tips.  Audrey listened, proud because she could understand so well and answer so fluently.

The sun, which in May shone on the courtyard for about forty minutes in the afternoon on clear days, caught these two creatures in the same beam.  They made a delicious sight—­Audrey dark, with her large forehead and negligible nose, and the concierge’s wife rather doll-like in the regularity of her features.  They were delicious not only because of their varied charm, but because they were so absurdly wise and omniscient, and because they had come to settled conclusions about every kind of worldly problem.  Youth and vitality equalised their ranks, and the fact that Audrey possessed many ascertained ancestors, and a part of the earth’s surface, and much money, and that the concierge’s wife possessed nothing but herself and a few bits of furniture, was not of the slightest importance.