"
PAUL VANDERHOFFEN. _Egeria Answers._
I
The doctor's waiting-room smelt strongly of antiseptics. That was
Patricia's predominating thought as she wandered aimlessly about the
apartment. She fingered its dusty furniture. She remembered afterward
the steel-engraving of Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, with General Lee
explaining some evidently important matter to those attentive and
unhumanly stiff politicians; and she remembered, too, how in depicting
one statesman, who unavoidably sat with his back to the spectator, the
artist had exceeded anatomical possibilities in order to obtain a
recognizable full-faced portrait. Yet at the time this picture had not
roused her conscious attention.
She went presently to the long table austerely decorated with two rows
of magazines, each partly covered by its neighbor, just as shingles are
placed. The arrangement irritated her unreasonably. She wanted to
disarrange these dog-eared pamphlets, to throw them on the floor, to
destroy them.
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