hich might scar the sight and burn the fingers of too venturesome an admirer. Claudius had a premonition that he ought to go out and kill the few minutes in strolling the st

y, wit and skill was requisite. Elsewhere, ability, practice, art, artifice, many gifts and accomplishments may triumph, but the fifth element as indispensable as the others, air, water, fire and earth-it is love, which legitimately monopolizes the theatre for its exhibition and glorification. Men and women c

hed their thirst quickly and departed; others stayed to quaff, jest, tell stories to cronies, before staggering out "full;" the olde

in both flaps by the liveried servants, a young lady entered, so fresh, delightful and easy that for a moment i

comparable, feared that the apple would have to be halved, since neither could have borne it entire away. But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and alluring a man into those byway

dylike, they were too unfettered in spite of the smooth gloves and the stylish unwrinkled ball dress, rather short in front to parade the slippers mentioned and silk stockings so nicely moulded to the trim ankle as to show the dimple. She was more fair in her eighteenth year-if she were so old-than a Danish baby in the cradle. The yellow hair had a clear golden tint not tawny, and the finen

at was that in our topsy-turvy age, when the disreputable woman in a mixed ball

er head, but it was to acknowledge her gracious acceptance of the tribute of applause; she moistened her fiery-coal lips with a serpent's active tongue; she surveyed her dominion with eyes that assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius that

um, exhaustive life of college; enjoy life a little. Hear a love-song, not a professor's lecture-see a dance of the ballet, not the procession of the deans and proctors; come to m

from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the

ress among the charred ruins of her palace, acclaimed without one dissentient shout, in her stead, and as the initial of a new line of sovereigns. She enchant

Frenchman and a German, respectively, the first would send it away, the second fish out

ea seized him not only to win her-a hundred around him shared that desire-but to keep her spotless, as he thought her, whatever the gossips had said. After all, slander had no opening to attack one whose youth was manifest; who owed no complexion to the wax-mask

no more changes the quality of love than t

ent realized one of his fantastic dreams of aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic Duke of Munich, Christopher the Leaper, whose s

gap between two verses, the charmer held the spectators

a little party odd enough in its components and awe-inspiring in what

spector of police, a sergeant of the watch, while behind this formidable official nucleus marched a serried body of civil and of military police. After them all, wringing his fat h

aying. The startled dancer, for all her aristocratic self-command, stopped immediately for explanation, and, riv

h pelisse, the chief of the beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she befriended this debutante, an

apparently perplexed at the rare conjunction of their leader and the authorities in friendly

rotund and sonorous, froze them w

tage-performer was of no consideration in the authorities' eyes)-Gentleme

udience rose to the

ch a timid spectator had vacated, and pushing Baboushka roughly, "and poi

r had been seen but the night previously among them in lusty life, an

ence ensued; one that meant acquiesce

ack prospect! I had better have quitted the hall and profite

him-a stranger, and the principal in the duel with canes. His cloak would help toward the ident

rest her in wider and wider circles. All at once they became fixed upon Claudius, and by instinct, the neighbors fell away from him

have the slayer of poor

r the benches toward him. He had but a single road to a possible escape: by the little door in the wall through which Rebecca Daniels had ushered him into the auditorium. He stooped as he turned, to elude any outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compact

" the functionar

opened the panel, leaped through and closed it. He did not dally in the passage, but hastened t

urity which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant. He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another dir

lives, i

returned, impatientl

she returned, laying her

e about that!" and he

that ruffian! to cane him to death-like the Russian grand-dukes, he was not born to die by the sword. To abduct one woman while paying court to ano

ut

And with a dulcet yet demoniacal laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slamm