There would be a little more money from Sparta, perhaps one hundred and fifty dollars.  It would come in a week, and after that there would be none.  But a supply of it, however modest, must be arranged somehow—­there were the “frais” of the atelier, to speak of nothing else.  The necessity was irritatingly absolute.  Elfrida wished that her scruples were not so acute about arranging it by writing for the press.  “If I could think for a moment that I had any right to it as a means of expression!” she reflected.  “But I haven’t.  It is an art for others.  And it is an art, as sacred as mine.  I have no business to degrade it to my uses.”  Her mental position when she went to see Frank Parke was a cynical compromise with her artistic conscience, of which she nevertheless sincerely regretted the necessity.

The correspondent of the Daily Dial had a club for one side of the river and a cafe for the other.  He dined oftenest at the cafe, and Elfrida’s card, with “urgent” inscribed in pencil on it, was brought to him that evening as he was finishing his coffee.  She had no difficulty in getting it taken in.  Mr. Parke’s theory was that a newspaper man gained more than he lost by accessibility.  He came out immediately, furtively returning a toothpick to his waistcoat pocket—­a bald, stout gentleman of middle age, dressed in loose gray clothes, with shrewd eyes, a nose which his benevolence just saved from being hawk-like, a bristling white mustache, and a pink double chin.  It rather pleased Frank Parke, who was born in Hammersmith, to be so constantly taken for an American—­presumably a New Yorker.

“Monsieur—­” began Elfrida a little formally.  She would not have gone on in French, but it was her way to use this form with the men she knew in Paris, irrespective of their nationality, just as she invariably addressed letters which were to be delivered in Sparta, Illinois, “a madame Leslie Bell, Avenue Columbia,” of that municipality.

“Miss Elfrida, I am delighted to see you,” he interrupted her, stretching out one hand and looking at his watch with the other.  “I am fortunate in having fifteen whole minutes to put at your disposal At the end of that time I have an appointment with a cabinet minister, who would rather see the devil.  So I most be punctual.  Shall we walk a bit along these dear boulevards, or shall I get a fiacre?  No?  You’re quite right—­Paris was made for eternal walking.  Now, what is it, my dear child?”

Mr. Parke had already concluded that it was money, and had fixed the amount he would lend.  It was just half of what Mademoiselle Knike, of Paolo Rossi’s, had succeeded in extracting from him last week.  He liked having a reputation for amiability among the ateliers, but he must not let it cost too much.

Elfrida felt none of that benumbing shame which sometimes seizes those who would try literature confessing to those who have succeeded in it, and the occasion was too important for the decorative diffidence that might have occurred to her if it had been trivial.  She had herself well gathered together, and she would have been concise and direct even if there had been more than fifteen minutes.