Five
I
In the small formal salon¹ of the H?tel St. Louis, three ladies were sitting,each engaged in her particular occupation. Mrs. Calvin Baker², short,plump, with well-blued hair, was writing letters with the same driving en-ergy she applied³ to all forms of activity. No one could have mistaken Mrs.
Calvin Baker for anything but a travelling American, comfortably off, withan inexhaustible thirst for precise information on every subject under thesun.
In an uncomfortable Empire-type chair, Miss Hetherington, who againcould not have been mistaken for anything but travelling English, wasknitting one of those melancholy⁴ shapeless-looking garments that Englishladies of middle age always seem to be knitting. Miss Hetherington wastall and thin with a scraggy neck, badly arranged hair, and a general ex-pression of moral disappointment in the universe.
Mademoiselle Jeanne Maricot was sitting gracefully⁶ in an upright chairlooking out of the window and yawning. Mademoiselle Maricot was a bru-nette dyed blonde, with a plain but excitingly made- up face. She waswearing chic⁷ clothes and had no interest whatsoever⁸ in the other occu-pants of the room whom she dismissed contemptuously in her mind as be-ing exactly what they were! She was contemplating⁹ an important changein her sex life and had no interest to spare for these animals of tourists!
Miss Hetherington and Mrs. Calvin Baker, having both spent a couple ofnights under the roof of the St. Louis, had become acquainted. Mrs. CalvinBaker, with American friendliness¹⁰, talked to everybody. Miss Hethering-ton, though just as eager for companionship, talked only to English andAmericans of what she considered a certain social

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