"There are ghosts all about us," she used to say. "There are voices in the wind. Spirits murmur in the treetops and as they walk across the wheat their garments sweep the fields like brooms."
However, of belief in spirits, she always retained full measure.
"Shadows are more real than people," she always declared. "It is the shadow that directs the footsteps of a man and not the man that controls the shadow. We cannot escape ghosts, for even as Stephen Phillips has written, 'Ghosts go along with us until the end.' He might have added, 'and a considerable distance afterward.' All earthly things are only shadows of some greater celestial sphere. Nothing exists, nothing is real. We are only wraiths."
Louella was a weird mixture of vixen and saint.
One of the most frequent visitors to her establishment was an artist called Ivan Alter. He was a giant of a man, larger even than Yekial Meigs, and more of a monster in appearance. His clenched fist was like a ham and his feet were so large he had to have his shoes made to order.
It was his head that attracted the most attention, an extra large head with a mass of shaggy black hair that never appeared to be combed. It was ever in rebellion. His eyes were very black and penetrating. His nose suggested Cyrano and his large sensuous mouth with his thick lips was almost repulsive. He was belligerent-looking but his heart was as tender as that of a child.
Sometimes he sat upstairs in Louella's apartment for hours and talked to her about art and people. He was one of the few men who were ever permitted in that sanctuary. Louella was attracted to him because he was an artist. Since Steve Garland's death she had taken an ever-increasing interest in art. In her own rooms she had many famous paintings, among them two Whistlers and a Zorn.
Ivan loved to talk to Louella. To her he poured out his heart. He had never married. Yet he was a great lover, tender and thoughtful of women.
"When I was twenty," he once told her bitterly, "I fell in love with a blonde girl, a silly vapid creature who was pretty in a stereotyped way. She was always smirking and never capa-
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