Neither of the sisters used the second person singular: the conversation, which was desultory, like the conversation of travelers in a railway carriage, ended abruptly as if the train had entered a tunnel. "_Vous êtes très-bien ici_," said Sylvia, looking round. The train had emerged and was running through a dull cutting. "_Oui, je suis très-bien ici_," Valentine replied. There was no hostility between the sisters; there was merely a blank, a sundering stretch of twelve years, that dismayed both of them with its tracklessness. Presently Sylvia noticed a photograph upon the wall so conspicuously framed as to justify a supposition that it represented the man who was responsible for Valentine's well-being. "_Oui, c'est mon amant_," said Valentine, in reply to the unspoken question. Sylvia was faced by the problem of commenting satisfactorily upon a photograph. To begin with, it was one of those photographs that preserve the individual hairs of the mustache but eradicate every line from the face. It was impossible to comment on it, and it would have been equally impossible to comment on the original in person. The only fact emerging from the photograph was that in addition to a mustache the subject of it owned a pearl tie-pin; but even of the genuineness of the pearl it was unable to give any assurance. "Photographs tell one nothing, do they?" Sylvia said, at last. "They're like somebody else's dreams." Valentine knitted her brows in perplexity. "Or somebody else's baby," Sylvia went on, desperately. "I don't like babies," said Valentine. "_Vraiment on est très-bien ici_," said Sylvia. She felt that by flinging an accentuated compliment to the room Valentine might feel her lover was included in the approbation. "And it's mine," said Valentine, complacently. "He bought it for me. _C'est pour la vie_." Passion might be quenched in the slough of habitude; love's pinions might molt like any farm-yard hen's. What was that, when the apartment was hers for life? "How many rooms have you?" Sylvia asked. "Besides this one I have a bedroom, a dining-room, a kitchen, and a bath-room. Would you like to see the bath-room?" When Valentine asked the last question she was transformed; a latent exultation flamed out from her immobility. "I should love to see the bath-room," said Sylvia. "I think bath-rooms are often the most interesting part of a house." "But this is an exceptional bath-room. It cost two thousand francs to install." Valentine led the way to the admired chamber, to which a complicated arrangement of shining pipes gave an orchestral appearance. Valentine flitted from tap to tap. Aretino himself could scarcely have imagined more methods of sprinkling water upon the human body. "And these pipes are for warming the towels," she explained. It was a relief to find pipes that led a comparatively passive existence amid such a convolution of fountainous activity.