taking her slender, neatly gloved hands in his two great paws expressed his gratitude with a warmth that brought the tears to his own eyes.

"You have done me a very great honor, Mademoiselle, to associate my name with yours, my humble self with your triumph, and to prove to all these vermin who are digging their claws into me that you don't believe in all the slanderous reports that are current about me. Really, it is something I can never forget. I might cover this magnificent bust with gold and diamonds and I should still be in your debt."

Luckily for the good Nabob, who was more susceptible to emotion than eloquent, he was obliged to make room for all those who were attracted by the refulgent talent, the artistic personality before their eyes: frantic enthusiasm which, for lack of words in which to express itself, disappears as it came; worldly admiration, inspired by kindly feeling, by an earnest desire to please, but whose every word is like a cold shower-bath; and then the hearty hand-clasps of rivals, of comrades, some very frank and cordial, others which communicate to you the inertness of their pressure; the tall, conceited zany whose absurd praise ought to delight you beyond measure, and who, in order not to spoil you utterly, accompanies it with "a few trifling reservations;" and the man who, while overwhelming you with compliments, proves to you that you do not know the first word of the trade; and the other good fellow, full of business, who stops just long enough to whisper in your ear that "So-and-so, the famous critic, doesn't seem to be satisfied." Felicia listened to it all with the utmost tranquillity, being raised by her triumph above the petty slurs of envy, and glowed with pride when a renowned veteran, some old associate of her father's, tossed her a "Well done, little one!" which carried her back to the past, to the little corner that was always reserved for her in the paternal studio in the days when she was beginning to carve out a little glory for herself in the renown of the great Ruys. But as a whole the congratulations left her quite unmoved, because she missed one which was more desirable in her eyes than all the rest, and which she was surprised that she had not yet received. Clearly she thought of him more than she had ever thought of any man before. Was this love at last, the great love that is so rare in the heart of an artist, who is incapable of abandoning herself unreservedly to a sentiment, or was it simply a dream of an honest, bourgeois life, well protected against ennui, that vile ennui, the precursor of storms, which she had so much reason to dread? In any event, she suffered herself to be deceived and had been living for several days in a state of delicious unrest, for love is so strong, so beautiful, that its semblance, its mirage, takes us captive and may move us as deeply as love itself.

Has it ever happened to you, as you walked along the street, thinking intently of some absent person very dear to your heart, to be warned of his approach by meeting one or more persons who bear a vague resemblance to him, preparatory images, outline sketches of the face that is soon to rise before you, which come forth from the crowd like successive appeals to your overstrained attention? These are magnetic, nervous phenomena at which we must not smile too broadly, because they constitute a susceptibility to suffering. Several times Felicia had fancied that she recognized Paul de Géry's curly head in the ever-moving, ever-changing flow of visitors, when suddenly she uttered a cry of pleasure. It was not he, however, but some one who much resembled him, whose regular, tranquil face was always blended now in her thoughts with that of her friend Paul, as the result of a resemblance rather moral than physical, and of the mild influence they both exerted over her mind.

"Aline!"

"Felicia!"

Although nothing is more difficult of comprehension than the friendship of two of society's queens, dividing salon royalty among themselves and lavishing flattering epithets, the petty graces of feminine effusiveness, upon each other, the friendships of childhood retain in the woman a frankness of demeanor which distinguishes them and makes them recognizable among all other friendships; bonds woven in innocence and woven firmly, like the pieces of needlework made by little girls, whereon an inexperienced hand has lavished thread and great knots; plants that have grown in virgin soil, past their bloom but deeply-rooted and full of life and vigor. And what joy to turn back a few steps, hand in hand,—boarding-school Arguses, where are you?—with equal knowledge of the road and of its slightest windings, and with the same wistful laugh. Standing a little apart, the two girls, who needed only to stand face to face to forget five years of separation, talked rapidly, recalling bygone days, while little Père Joyeuse, his ruddy face set off by a new cravat, drew himself up to his full height, proud beyond words that his daughter should be so warmly greeted by a celebrity. Proud he certainly had reason to be, for that little Parisian, even beside her resplendent friend, retained her full value for charm and youth and luminous innocence, beneath her twenty years, her rich, golden girlhood, which the joy of meeting caused to put forth fresh flowers.

"How happy you must be! I haven't seen anything; but I hear everybody say that it is so beautiful."

"Happy above all things to find you again, little Aline. It is such a long time—"

"I should say as much, you bad girl. Whose fault is it?"

In the saddest recess of her memory Felicia found the date of the rupture between them, coincident in her mind with another date when her youth died in a never-to-be-forgotten scene.

"What have you been doing all this time, my love?"

"Oh! always the same thing—nothing worth talking about."

"Yes, yes, we know what you call doing nothing, little brave heart. It is giving your life to others, is it not?"

But Aline was no longer listening. She was smiling affectionately at a point straight before her, and Felicia, turning to see to whom that smile was addressed, saw Paul de Géry replying to Mademoiselle Joyeuse's shy and blushing salutation.

"Do you know each other, pray?"

"Do I know Monsieur Paul! I should think so. We talk of you often enough. Has he never told you?"

"Never. He is terribly sly—"

She stopped abruptly as a light flashed through her mind; and, paying no heed to de Géry, who came forward to do homage to her triumph, she leaned hastily toward Aline and whispered to her. The other blushed, protested with smiles, with inaudible words: "How can you imagine such a thing? At my age. A grandmamma!" And at last she grasped her father's arm to escape that friendly raillery.

When Felicia saw the two young people walk away side by side, when she realized—what they themselves did not yet know—that they loved each other, she felt as if everything about her were crumbling. And when her dream lay at her feet, in a thousand fragments, she began to stamp upon it in a rage. After all, he was quite right to prefer that little Aline to her. Would a respectable man ever dare to marry Mademoiselle Ruys? She with a home of her own, a family, nonsense! You are a strumpet's daughter, my dear; you must be a strumpet yourself, if you wish to be anything.

The day was drawing near its close. The crowd, moving more rapidly than before, with gaps here and there, was beginning to stream toward the exit, after eddying violently around the success of the year, surfeited, a little weary, but still excited by the artistic electricity with which the atmosphere was charged. A great ray of sunlight, the sunlight of four o'clock in