It struck him, as a happy thought, that he might save a little if he lived on such cold solids as he could buy at the fruit-stand and _pâtisseries_ and such liquids as he might warm in a tin-cup over his lamp. Better men than he was had lived thus in the Quarter, and Cartaret, as the thought took shape, rather enjoyed the prospect: it made him feel as if he were another martyr to Art, or as if--though he was not clear as to the logic of this--he were another martyr to Love. He considered going to Père la Chaise and putting violets on the tomb of Héloise and Abelard; but he decided that he could not afford the tram-fare, and he was already too tired to walk, so he made his scanty purchases instead, and had rather a good time doing it. He passed Chitta on his way up the stairs to his room, with his arms full of edibles, and he thought that she frowned disapproval. He supposed she would tell her mistress scornfully, and he hoped that her mistress would understand and pity him. He got a board and nailed it to the sill of one of the rear windows. On that he stored his food and, contemplating it, felt like a successful housekeeper. CHAPTER VII OF DOMESTIC ECONOMY, OF DAY-DREAMS, AND OF A FAR COUNTRY AND ITS SOVEREIGN LADY L'indiscrétion d'un de ces amis officieux qui ne sauraient garder inédite la nouvelle susceptible de vous causer un chagrin.--Murger: _Scènes de la Vie de Bohème_. You would have said that it behooved a man in Charlie Cartaret's situation to devote his evenings to a consideration of its difficulties and his days to hard work; but Cartaret, though he did, as you will see, try to work, devoted the first evening of his new régime to thoughts that, if they affected his situation at all, tended only to complicate it. He thought, as he had so much of late, and as he was to think so much more in the future, of the Lady of the Rose. Who was she? Whence did she come? What was this native land of hers that she professed to love so well? And, if she did love it so well, why had she left it and come to Paris with a companion that appeared to be some strange compromise between guardian and servant? He wondered if she were some revolutionary exile: Paris was always full of revolutionary exiles. He wondered if she were a rightful heiress, dispossessed of a foreign title. Perhaps she was the lovely pretender to a throne. In that mysterious home of hers, she must have possessed some exalted position, or the right to it, for Chitta had kneeled to her on the dusty floor of this studio, and the Lady's manner, he now recalled, was the manner of one accustomed to command. Her beauty was of a type that he had read of as Irish--the beauty of fair skin, hair black and eyes of deepest blue; but the speech was the English of a woman born to another tongue.