In waking, voluntary moments she would see her problem only as an unanswerable enigma.
Yet in the beginning she had felt a splendid confidence.
Her appropriation of theory had been so brilliant and so rapid, her instructive appreciation had helped itself out so well with the casual formulas of the schools, she seemed to herself to have an absolute understanding of expression.

She held her social place among the others by her power of perception, and that, with the completeness of her repudiation of the bourgeois, had given her Nadie Palicsky, whom the rest found difficult, variable, unreasonable.

Elfrida was certain that if she might only talk to Lucien she could persuade him of a great deal about her talent that escaped him--she was sore it escaped him--in the mere examination of her work.

It chafed her always that her personality could not touch the master; that she must day after day be only the dumb, submissive pupil.

She felt sometimes that there were things she might say to Lucien which would be interesting and valuable for him to hear.
Lucien was always non-committal for the first few months.
Everybody said so, and it was natural enough.