whose poles and swings and horizontal bars, seen indistinctly
over the wall, have the look of gibbets. A bugle rings out in the yard,
and that blast carries the marquis back thirty years, reminds him of his
campaigns in Algeria, the lofty ramparts of Constantine, Mora's arrival
in the regiment, and duels, and select card-parties. Ah! how well life
began! What a pity that those infernal cards--Ps--ps--ps--However, it's
worth something to have saved one's breeding.

"Monsieur," said the attendant, "your bath is ready."

* * * * *

At that moment Madame Jenkins, pale and gasping for breath, entered
Andre's studio, drawn thither by an instinct stronger than her will, by
the feeling that she must embrace her child before she died. And yet,
when she opened the door--he had given her a duplicate key--it was a
relief to her to see that he had not returned, that her excitement,
increased by a long walk, an unusual experience in her luxurious life as
a woman of wealth, would have time to subside. No one in the room. But
on the table the little note that he always left when he went out, so
that his mother, whose visits, because of Jenkins' tyranny, had become
more and more infrequent and brief, might know where he was, and either
wait for him or join him. Those two had not ceased to love each other
dearly, profoundly, despite the cruel circumstances which compelled them
to introduce into their relations as mother and son the precautions, the
clandestine mystery of a different kind of love.

"I am at my rehearsal," said the little note to-day, "I shall return
about seven."

That attention from her son, whom she had not been to see for three
weeks, and who persisted in expecting her none the less, brought to the
mother's eyes a flood of tears which blinded her. One would have said
that she had entered a new world. It was so light, so peaceful, so high,
that little room which caught the last gleam of daylight on its windows,
which was all aflame with the last rays of the sun already sinking below
the horizon, and which seemed, like all attic rooms, carved out of a
piece of sky, with its bare walls, decorated only by a large portrait,
her own; nothing but her own portrait smiling in the place of honor and
another in a gilt frame on the table. Yes, in very truth, the humble
little lodging, which was still so light when all Paris was becoming
dark, produced a supernatural impression upon her, despite t