Generally it was some small apartment in Paris, or Florence, that they occupied, with rather scanty meals when the end of the quarter came.

During Count Shulski's life she had always either lived in some smart villa at Nice, or led a wandering existence in hotels; and for months at a time, in later years, when he disappeared, upon his own pleasures bent, he would leave her in some old Normandy farmhouse, only too thankful to be free from his hateful presence.

Here Mimo and Mirko would join her, and while they painted and played, she would read.

Her whole inner life was spent with books.

Among the shady society her husband had frequented she had been known as "The Stone." She never unbent, and while her beauty and extraordinary type attracted all the men she came across they soon gave up their pursuit.
She was quite hopeless, they said--and half-witted, some added! No woman could sit silent like that for hours, otherwise.