Jocantha went back to her house in Chelsea, which struck her for the
first time as looking dull and over-furnished. She had a resentful
conviction that Gregory would be uninteresting at dinner, and that the
play would be stupid after dinner. On the whole her frame of mind showed
a marked divergence from the purring complacency of Attab, who was again
curled up in his corner of the divan with a great peace radiating from
every curve of his body.
But then he had killed his sparrow.
ON APPROVAL
Of all the genuine Bohemians who strayed from time to time into the would-
be Bohemian circle of the Restaurant Nuremberg, Owl Street, Soho, none
was more interesting and more elusive than Gebhard Knopfschrank. He had
no friends, and though he treated all the restaurant frequenters as
acquaintances he never seemed to wish to carry the acquaintanceship
beyond the door that led into Owl Street and the outer world. He dealt
with them all rather as a market woman might deal with chance passers-by,
exhibiting her wares and chattering about the weather and the slackness
of business, occasionally about rheumatism, but never showing a desire to
penetrate into their daily lives or to dissect their ambitions.
He was understood to belong to a family of peasant farmers, somewhere in
Pomerania; some two years ago, according to all that was known of him, he
had abandoned the labours and responsibilities of swine tending and goose
rearing to try his fortune as an artist in London.
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