"I thought while I was about it that I would have the tiles laid right up to the ceiling," Valentine went on, pensively. "And you see, the ceiling is made of looking-glass. When the water is very hot, _ça fait drôle, tu sais, on ne se voit plus_." It was the first time she had used the second person singular; the bath-room had created in Valentine something that almost resembled humanity. "Yes," Sylvia agreed. "I suppose that is the best way of making the ceiling useful." "_C'est pour la vie_," Valentine contentedly sighed. "But if he were to marry?" Sylvia ventured. "It would make no difference," Valentine answered. "I have saved money and with a bath-room like this one can always get a good rent. Everything in the apartment is mine, and the apartment is mine, too." "_Alors, tu es contente?_" said Sylvia. "_Oui, je suis contente_," said Valentine. "_Elle est jolie, ta salle de bain_." "_Oui, elle est jolie comme un amour_," Valentine assented, with a sweet maternal smile. They talked of the bath-room for a while when they came back to the boudoir; Sylvia was conscious of displaying the politeness with which one descends from the nursery at an afternoon call. "_Enfin_," said Sylvia, "_Je file_." "_Tu pars tout de suite de Marseilles?_" "_Oui, je pars ce soir_." She had not really intended to leave Marseilles that evening, but there seemed no reason to stay. "_C'est dommage que tu n'as pas vu Louis_." "_Il s'appelle Louis?_" "_Oui, il s'appelle Louis. Il est à Lyon pour ses affaires_." "_Alors, au revoir, Valentine_." "_Au revoir, Sylvie_." They hesitated, both of them, to see which would offer her cheek first; in the end they managed to be simultaneous. "Even the farewell was a stalemate," Sylvia said to herself on the way down-stairs. She wondered, while she was walking back to her hotel, what was going to be the passion of her own life. One always started out with a dim conception of perfect love, however one might scoff at it openly in self-protection, but evidently it by no means followed that love for a man, let alone perfect love, would ever arrive. Lily had succeeded in inspiring at least one man with love for her, but she had found her own passion in roulette with Camacho tacked to it, inherited like a husband's servant, familiar with any caprice, but jealous and irritable. Valentine had found her grand passion in a bath-room that satisfied even her profoundest maternal instincts. Dorothy had loved a coronet with such fervor that she had been able to abandon everything that could smirch it. Sylvia's own mother had certainly found at thirty-four her grand passion, but Sylvia felt that it would be preferable to fall in love with a bath-room now than wait ten years for a Henry.