Elfrida's actions had come to have a curious importance to Janet; she realized how great an importance with the access of irritated surprise which came to her with, this unopened note. In the beginning she had found Elfrida's passionate admiration so novel and so sweet that her heart was half won before they came, together in completer intimacy, and she gave her new original friend a meed of affection which seemed to strengthen as it instinctively felt itself unreturned--at least in kind. Elfrida retracted none of her admiration, and she added to it, when she ceded her sympathy, the freedom of a fortified city; but Janet hungered for more. Inwardly she cried out for the something warm and human that was lacking to Elfrida's feeling for her, and sometimes she asked herself with grieved cynicism how her friend found it worth while to pretend to care so cleverly. More than once she had written to Elfrida with the deliberate purpose of soothing herself by provoking some tenderness in reply, and invariably the key she had struck had been that of homage, more or less whimsically unwilling. "_Don't_ write such delicious things to me, _ma mie_," would come the answer. "You make me curl up with envy. What shall I do if malice and all uncharitableness follow? I admire you so horribly--there!" Janet told herself sorely that she was sick of Elfrida's admiration--it was not the stuff friendships were made of. And a keener pang supervened when she noticed that whatever savored most of an admiration on her own part had obviously the highest value for her friend. The thought of Kendal only heightened her feeling about Elfrida. She would be so much the stronger, she thought, to resist any--any strain--if she could be quite certain how much Elfrida cared--cared about her personally. Besides, the indictment that she, Janet, had against her seemed to make the girl's affection absolutely indispensable. And now Elfrida had apparently left London without a word. She had dined in Kensington Square the night before, and this was eleven o'clock in the morning. It looked very much as if she had deliberately intended to leave them in the dark as to her movements. People didn't go out of town indefinitely "for the present," on an hour's notice. The thought brought sudden tears to Janet's eyes, which she winked back angrily. "I am getting to be a perfect old maid!" she reflected. "Why shouldn't Frida go to Kamschatka, if she wants to, without giving us notice? It's only her eccentric way of doing things." And she frowned upon, her sudden resolution to rush off to Fleet Street in a cab and inquire of Mrs. Jordan. It would be espionage. She would wait, quit calmly and indefinitely, till Frida chose to write, and then she would treat the escapade, whatever it was, with the perfect understanding of good-fellowship. Or perhaps not indefinitely--for two or three days--it was just possible that Frida might have had bad news and started suddenly