She liked life. She liked her _pension_. She liked the courteous French girls and the bravura Americans, and their world of scent, and powder, and trim waist belts, and Smart Sets, and candy, and complicated love affairs. It amused her immensely, and did not for an instant impress her as having anything to do with real life. Real life was the other side of the Channel. Unconsciously, however, the views of her fellows, and the books they read, their surreptitious cigarettes, and their ready and untruthful tongues, had a certain influence. She read La Rochefoucauld, with a “Yes, indeed,” expression that might have tickled even that disillusioned gentleman, bought a powder-puff and sometimes remembered to use it, told a lie or two and was never found out. That impressed her. In Brackenhurst one at least had conscience-ache. She acquired a bosom friend and defended, upon occasion, two solid and reform-clad Germans from the rest of the dormitory. In return she discovered that they had adored her for weeks. She liked that. She discovered that she could talk musingly and without effort, that it was perfectly easy to be at the top of her classes. In spite of her foreignness she became the show pupil—and she liked that too. She wished that Justin could see her sometimes.... She discovered that she could act (indeed some devil dispossessed her at charades and dressing-up, lurked behind her eyes, rapturous and Bacchanal), that she could string words together for the school plays, that she had a pretty voice, that she could captain an emergency, that, in short, she was a success. This was perfectly delightful! She only wished there were a way of telling Justin exactly what a charming person every one thought her, without appearing conceited. She tried, in one or two letters, but it couldn’t be done. She had to tear them up. She heard from Justin sometimes. They corresponded in sets of threes and fives—letter, answer, letter—or letter, answer, letter, answer, letter—and then a pause of months. His half sheets, terse, generalizing, almost void of personality, were the events of her exile, a double source of delight. They were Justin’s letters and—they had to be answered! It was in the code, you see, that you only wrote to Justin turn and turn about, and never twice running, except birthdays and Christmas and Easter or anything special, like sending a New Year parcel to Mrs. Cloud, or when you hadn’t heard for a very long time; because letters bored Justin. And besides—— Certainly a changing Laura, though she herself could not have explained to you the meaning of that “and besides——”