Already," she smiled with a charming effect of assertiveness, "I have bought the blue pencil." "Will it come soon ?" Kendal asked seriously.
"_Cher ami_," Elfrida said, drawing her handsome brows together a little, "it will come sooner than you expect That is what I want," she went on deliberately, "more than anything else in the whole world, to do things -- _good_ things, you understand--and to have them appreciated and paid for in the admiration of people who feel and see and know.

For me life has nothing else, except the things that other people do, better and worse than mine." "Better and worse than yours," Kendal repeated.

"Can't you think of them apart ?" "No, I can't," Elfrida interrupted; "I've tried, and I can _not_.

I know it's a weakness--at least I'm half persuaded that it is--but I must have the personal standard in everything." "But you are a hero-worshipper; often I have seen you at it." "Yes," she said cynically, while the white-capped maid who handed Kendal asparagus stared at her with a curiosity few of the Hyacinth's lady diners inspired, "and when I look into that I find it is because of a secret consciousness that tells me that I, in the hero's place, should have done just the same thing.

Or else it is because of the gratification my vanity finds in my sympathy with his work, whatever it is.