eplied Monsieur de Clagny, guessing what it was that Dinah
most wanted to know. "And so, in spite of the commotion to which your
departure gave rise, you still have your legal status."

"Why!" she exclaimed, "can Monsieur de la Baudraye still hope----"

"Your husband, madame, did what he always does--made a little
calculation."

The lawyer left the box when the journalist returned, bowing with
dignity.

"You are a greater hit than the piece," said Etienne to Dinah.

This brief triumph brought greater happiness to the poor woman than she
had ever known in the whole of her provincial existence; still, as they
left the theatre she was very grave.

"What ails you, my Didine?" asked Lousteau.

"I am wondering how a woman succeeds in conquering the world?"

"There are two ways. One is by being Madame de Stael, the other is by
having two hundred thousand francs a year."

"Society," said she, "asserts its hold on us by appealing to our vanity,
our love of appearances.--Pooh! We will be philosophers!"

That evening was the last gleam of the delusive well-being in which
Madame de la Baudraye had lived since coming to Paris. Three days later
she observed a cloud on Lousteau's brow as he walked round the little
garden-plot smoking a cigar. This woman, who had acquired from her
husband the habit and the pleasure of never owing anybody a sou, was
informed that the household was penniless, with two quarters' rent
owing, and on the eve, in fact, of an execution.

This reality of Paris life pierced Dinah's heart like a thorn; she
repented of having tempted Etienne into the extravagances of love. It is
so difficult to pass from pleasure to work, that happiness has wrecked
more poems than sorrows ever helped to flow in sparkling jets.
Dinah, happy in seeing Etienne taking his ease, smoking a cigar after
breakfast, his face beaming as he basked like a lizard in the sunshine,
could not summon up courage enough to make herself the bum-bailiff of a
magazine.

It struck her that through the worthy Migeon, Pamela's father, she might
pawn the few jewels she possessed, on which her "uncle," for she was
learning to talk the slang of the town, advanced her nine hundred
francs. She kept three hundred for her baby-clothes and the expenses
of her illness, and joyfully presented the sum due to Lousteau, who was
ploughing, furrow by furrow, or, if you will, line by line, through a
novel for a periodical.

"Dearest heart," said she, "