After a little pause she went on, ’So my problem is, first, how to earn our livelihood, and secondly, how to make something like a home for Camille, something better than this tobacco-smoky, absinthe-scented atmosphere of the Latin Quarter.  And I can see only one way of accomplishing the two things.  You will smile—­but I have considered it from every point of view.  I have examined myself, my own capabilities.  I have weighed all the chances.  I wish to take a flat, in another quarter of the town, near the Etoile or the Parc Monceau, and—­open a pension.  There is my plan.’

I had a much simpler and pleasanter plan of my own, but of that, as I knew, she would hear nothing.  I did not smile at hers, however; though I confess it was not easy to imagine madcap Nina in the role of a landlady, regulating the accounts and presiding at the table of a boarding-house.  I can’t pretend that I believed there was the slightest likelihood of her filling it with success.  But I said nothing to discourage her; and the fact that she is rich to-day proves how little I divined the resources of her character.  For the boarding-house she kept was an exceedingly good boarding-house; she showed herself the most practical of mistresses; and she prospered amazingly.  Jeanselme, whose father had recently died, leaving him a fortune, lent her what money she needed to begin with; she took and furnished a flat in the Avenue de l’Alma; and I—­I feel quite like an historical personage when I remember that I was her first boarder.  Others soon followed me, though, for she had friends amongst all the peoples of the earth—­English and Americans, Russians, Italians, Austrians, even Roumanians and Servians, as well as French; and each did what he could to help.  At the end of a year she overflowed into the flat above; then into that below; then she acquired the lease of the entire house.  She worked tremendously, she was at it early and late, her eyes were everywhere; she set an excellent table; she employed admirable servants; and if her prices were a bit stiff, she gave you your money’s worth, and there were no ‘surprises.’  It was comfortable and quiet; the street was bright; the neighbourhood convenient.  You could dine in the common salle-a-manger if you liked, or in your private sitting-room.  And you never saw your landlady except for purposes of business.  She lived apart, in the entresol, alone with Camille and her body-servant Jeanne.  There was the ‘home’ she had set out to make.

Meanwhile another sort of success was steadily thrusting itself upon her—­she certainly never went out of her way to seek it; she was much too busy to do that.  Such of her old friends as remained in Paris came frequently to see her, and new friends gathered round her.  She was beautiful, she was intelligent, responsive, entertaining.  In her salon, on a Friday evening, you would meet half the lions that were at large in the town—­authors, painters, actors, actresses, deputies, even an occasional