helor's nest,-a nest in which sitting-hens without eggs succeeded each other rapidly,-to one of those upholsterers who installed, in regulation style, the knickknacks so

n crowded with Japanese bric-à-brac, Chinese satin draperies, tapestries, Renaissance chests and terra-cotta figures writhing upon their sculptured bases. The uph

f ill-matched curiosities, where ivory netzkés on tables surrounded Barye bronzes and Dresden figures, there lacked some evidence of an individual character that would give a dominant tone, an original key, to the

kground of the antechamber a panoply on which keen-bladed swords with steel guards were mingled with Scotch claymores with silver hilts, thus giv

in that bantering tone which is peculiar to Parisian gossip, the relish of the "sweets of power"; for himself, what kept him in Paris was Paris itself, just that and nothing

onsiderate friend to pay his gambling debts and adjust his differences on the Bourse speculations at the very nick of time; just now he was well in the saddle and decidedly attractive, with a sound heart and a well-lined pocket, enjoying, not disliking life, which seemed to him a term of imprisonment to be passed merrily-a Parisian to the finger-tips and to the bottom of his soul, worse than a Parisian in fact, a Parisianized provincial inoculated with Parisine, just as certain s

ionable novel, very faithfully written, but wearisome in the extreme, and he had awakened late and somewhat heavy-headed. There were fringes of snow upon the wi

the better," thought Lissac

his servant. "In such weather

smoking at his side in a burnished silver teapot with Japanese designs, when, notwithstanding his

a borrower,

who had not even had his name printed on a piece of Bristol-board, and, adjusting his glass, he deciphered the fine wr

w he

elf in the mirror, just as a coquette might do before a rendezvous, smoothing out his flannel vest

l trousers, a woman half-raised the satin portière, and, standing within a frame formed by the fol

mornin

ht toward her with

hem to Guy, laughing the while, as they looked at each other face to face. He betrayed some little astonishment, gazing at her as a person examines one whom one ha

not expec

onfe

onsiderable time sin

he reflected that, since they last met, the parting of his brown locks had been devil

aken, I often

he apartment, the framed pictures, the designs and the gilding, and, on sitti

! You always had good tas

ar Marianne," he said, giving to this

ged her should

ry much altered?"

rejuve

elieve a w

You look like

arianne, laughing in a clear, rin

her curiously, seated

s young woman and imparted a warm tone to her small and brilliant gray eyes. She half turned her fair face toward him, her retroussé nose was tiny

sing her form to the waist; she trembled slightly in her tight-fitting dress, and golden tint

with a jerky movement and was abstract

omed as he was to estimate at a glance the material condition of people, divined that this woman felt some embarrassment. She whom he had known four or f

nne K

cting, passionate and half-mad. She was not dissolute but merely turbulent, independent and impatient of restra

d, under cover of his own ignorance, allowed the ardent dreams of his niece and her wayward fits to develop freely like poisonous plants; near this man, in the vicious atmosphere of an old

and pipes. A little creature, she served as a plaything for this painter without talent, and he allowed her t

by an Eisen or a Moreau, depicting passionate kisses exchanged under arbors, where behind curtains, short silk skirts appeared i

s as it might have produced signs, did not dream that the girl growing up beside him was also in love with chimeras, and drawn toward the abyss, not however to learn the myst

ess in her movements. But this huge, ruddy, rotund man, speaking above his rounded stomach, cared only for the morality of art, ?sthetic dignity, and the necessity of raising the standard of art, of creating

face pale, but with a burning light in her gray eyes, while her fingers were thrust through her hair, o

ry and exhausted pedestrians. It was stifling behind this window and Marianne's gloomy horizon was this

mon Kayser, and to live the passionate life of those who are free, loved,

-the whole street being deserted, the neighbors having gone into the country-or in winter, with its gray sky, the roofs covered with the snow that was stained all too soon, when the brilliant lights behind the curtains

nte, the same opinions, and grew enthusiastic and excited according as the pictures of the masters agreed with his style, his system, his creed. One should hear him run the gamut of all his great phrases: My sys-tem! Marianne knew when the expression was coming. All these Flemi

pedantic, with a false ring, they entere

rned to the house with depressing headaches and muttering wrathful imprecations against destiny. She even p

rything, sullied by all the jokes of the Kayser studio, which, in spite of the exalted, sacrosanct, ?sthetic discussions which took place therein, sometimes shockingly resembled a smoking-room-this physical

ion. To run about giving private lessons on the piano, seemed to Marianne to degrade her almost to the

? To fall from one Bohemian condition to another, from exigency to want, to be the wife of one of these greasy-haired dreamers? Her whole nature shuddered in revolt at this idea. Through the open window, the tepid breath of nature waft

s folly, a rash

the rest, he was an artist who, in the jostling daily life, kindled his love at

and, as it were, out of bravado. Since she was without social position, motherless and isolated, having no family, withou

ed with

of vulgar mistresses, and had not the mad woman's superior intelligence, will, and even her disgust, ruled at once ov

ts? "These diabolical women, nobody knows them, not even those who made them. A father even would not have detected anything. The more excuse t

arianne was of age and could dispose of her lot without the necessity of submitting to a strict endorsement of her conduct. When she had "sounded all the depths of th

ur pipe," Marianne

t astray, even if that girl were his niece? Public morality was not hurt thereby. Ah! if he, Kayser, had exhibited to the world a lewd picture, it would have been "a horse of a differen

ntertained her. With him she talked over everything, she gave herself up to him, and made plans for the future. Why should they ever separate? They adored each other. Guy was rich, or at any rate he lived sumptuously. Marianne

en? She did not eve

even once? But it was just this that induced Guy to abandon this pretty girl. He was afraid. He saw no end to such a union as theirs. The little love-affair that enticed him assumed

art,-had certainly forgotten his niece; nevertheless, Lissac at times felt somewhat tempted to restore her to him. He was grieved at the thought of abandoning Marianne to another. His dread of

again! You are in danger,

principle, that a man should always be unfettered. He held in horror this shameful half-marriage that the language of slang had baptized, as with a stain: Collage. He therefore decided to play his life against his liberty, and during the temporary absence of this nurse est

ived his letters. She surmised, however, that Guy, desiring to avoid her, caused his brief notes to be sent by some friend from towns that he had left. To play there the absurd part of a woman chasing her lover would have been ridiculous. She remained,

ral," said Kayser to her. "In art, morality before everything

though by letters. Marianne wrote, Guy replied. All the bitter reproofs had been exchanged through the post, yet, in spite of this corresp

nne arrived, half shivering, in the new apartment, warmed her tin

omewhat s

mbers. To think that he had risked his life for that woman; that he should have sacrificed his name; that he should have torn himself from her with such harsh bravado; that he should have cut deep into his own being in order to leave her; that he had fled, leaving for Italy with a craving desire for solitude

e back supported her own, and half-bending her fair neck that reclined on the lace-covered head-rest, she looked

ilated with a nervous trembling that intensified the mocking smile betrayed by her curling lips. Her hands were resting upon her

ed him of his former ecstasies. Again he saw, shadowed by the chin, that part of her neck where he loved to bury his brow and to rest his lips, greedily, lingering

l sensation of uneasiness to which he had been a stranger in connection with his many later easy love adventures. A light, penetrating and

iosity. Guy's mute interrogation possibly embarrassed h

s she opened a Russia leather cig

e steeped in alcohol that stood in a si

between her fingers and lighted it at the flame. The gleam of the alcohol brightened h

, as she returned him the little sponge

turbing charm of reminiscences, watched Marianne who

that everybody wears now, you wore before any one else, on your fair head. Whenever I see one, I follow it. On my word, though, not for her. The fair unknown trotted before me, making the sidewalks echo to the touch of the high heels of her little shoes, while I continued to follow her under the sweet illusion that she would lead me at the end of the journey to a spot where it seemed to me a little of paradi

nne l

lic, my dear Guy," said

ly, nothi

her late in the day, have they not? A little valerian and qui

making fu

h so many poetic ideas and cause you to trot along for such a distance behind plumed toques-it was

ot refrain

ause-I loved y

with her elegance, of an artist's model giving a pupil a re

stupid, how can it be

s stupid to deprive one's self of the woman w

oldly wrote upon the photographs to some one who loved you d

upward. "Such things as that are never forgotte

u were

honest man," she a

since that time, that you ado

fe that I have led, I have been so often purchased that I have been mor

e stroke of a whip-lash in the air, she had expressed so much

ad come there to tempt him. In her languishing and, as it were, abandoned pose, he followed the outline of her graceful body, blooming in its youth, the fulness of her bust, the lines of her skirt closely clinging to her exquisite hips, and the unlooked-for return of the lost mistre

ar eyes, his hand endeavoring to seize a white hand that nimbly eluded his gra

rtly said, in a tone of raillery, that suggested a p

that making lo

ac s

at is a romance whose pages you

ife," whispered Liss

is true there are books one never reads but once. An

ette into the fire and looked with a bright, pe

found and incurable ennui, I yawn my life away, as some one said, I yawn it away even to the point of dislocating my jaw. The days seem dull to me, people stupid, books insipid, while fools seem idiots and witty people fools. It is to have the blues

as if she were attacked with a fit of coughing. From time to time, she blew away a cloud of smoke that escaped from her

before, Guy looked at her and nodded his head gravely, like a physician who fi

nhappy, Mariann

can be battled against. It is like thunder. But the rain, the eternal rain, incessantly falling, with its

ment that expressed boundless weariness and disclosed to Guy the d

san endured by a true woman. My soul is mine, my spirit and my intellect, but these are chained to a body that I abandon to others-whom I have abandoned, thank God! for I a

anger and suffering, this cry of pain that declared itself i

n to all, my name, whence I come, where I go, my thoughts, my hatred, my past loves, everything, in fact, a secret. I shall cloister myself. I shall stretch myself out on a reclining-chair and think that if, by chance,-as happens sometimes-an aneurism, a congestion, or I don't know what, should strike me down in that solitude, no on

him. But there was no attempt to find the marker at the place where the romance had been interr

knew her so well!-to return thus, only to conjure up the vanished recollections, to communicate the secret of her present sorrows

yearning for solitude, she again indulged in

nt guest at Sabine Marsy's re

But I have no great liki

e a scientific one, if one may believe the reporters-Monsieur de Rosas

an indifferent tone, she slightly be

ne had in speaking to him about De Rosas. In a vague way he surmised t

he is in Paris," he sai

m very soon, for he w

old yo

. Madame Marsy is bent on his narrating his travels, on the occasion of a special s

ifferent. But," asked Lissac af

that you know perfectly well t

say. To-day, it is through the reporter

use I am particularly anxious to hear Monsieur de Rosas

is it?"

Félicien David's Desert that I used to play for you on the piano? I w

u to Madame Marsy. I am both crimp and introducer; but I am delighted to introduce you to a salon that you will, I trust, find less

ry agreeable. She invited me to call on her, but I

d, is one absolutely prohibited fro

have nothing hidden from my friends," said Marianne,

e words: "Nothing

all very well, it is very

ut

ov

wings, b-r-r! Like swallows. It flits

small firm hand a

. I will give you the address. But it is not Guy who will c

ery silly if I

hrugged he

that sort of talk for others. It is a lo

ands and kissed his cheeks in a frank,

, that is enough. Do not com

again, to find in her his mistress once more, to restra

over her shoulders, and said, a

? I am to go to

. I will have an i

ke a jolly companion. Or I'll go with my uncle. You wil

here her smile disclosed her pretty, almost mischievous-looking teeth-"to Monsieur Vaudr

he heavy folds of the Japanese portière that fell in its place behind her. He opened the

be with you," she said to

or, and her outline, that for a moment stood out in the light of the

e room, the cloud emitted by Marianne's cigarette. And with this bluish vapor also disappeared the odor of new

, the snow-covered roofs stood out clearly against a soft blue sky, limpid an

t exhaled from the woman. It seemed to him that a sort of band had been torn from his brow whic

as's. Our friends' friends are our lovers. Egad! on my word, I was almost taken in again, never

he closed the window,