led upon
to light a fire in the little parlor. Elsewhere, although the day was
declining, few persons felt such a need; but in No. 19 rue Bienville
there were two chilling influences combined requiring an artificial
offset. One was the ground under the floor, which was only three inches
distant, and permanently saturated with water; the other was despair.

Before this fire the two ladies sat down together like watchers, in that
silence and vacuity of mind which come after an exhaustive struggle
ending in the recognition of the inevitable; a torpor of thought, a
stupefaction of feeling, a purely negative state of joylessness sequent
to the positive state of anguish. They were now both hungry, but in want
of some present friend acquainted with the motions of mental distress
who could guess this fact and press them to eat. By their eyes it was
plain they had been weeping much; by the subdued tone, too, of their
short and infrequent speeches.

Alphonsina, having made the fire, went out with a bundle. It was
Aurora's last good dress. She was going to try to sell it.

"It ought not to be so hard," began Clotilde, in a quiet manner of
contemplating some one else's difficulty, but paused with the saying
uncompleted, and sighed under her breath.

"But it _is_ so hard," responded Aurora.

"No, it ought not to be so hard--"

"How, not so hard?"

"It is not so hard to live," said Clotilde; "but it is hard to be
ladies. You understand--" she knit her fingers, dropped them into her
lap and turned her eyes toward Aurora, who responded with the same
motions, adding the crossing of her silk-stockinged ankles before
the fire.

"No," said Aurora, with a scintillation of irrepressible mischief in her
eyes.

"After all," pursued Clotilde, "what troubles us is not how to make a
living, but how to get a living without making it."

"Ah! that would be magnificent!" said Aurora, and then added, more
soberly; "but we are compelled to make a living."

"No."

"No-o? Ah! what do you mean with your 'no'?"

"I mean it is just the contrary; we are compelled not to make a living.
Look at me: I can cook, but I must not cook; I am skillful with the
needle, but I must not take in sewing; I could keep accounts; I could
nurse the sick; but I must not. I could be a confectioner, a milliner,
a dressmaker, a vest-maker, a cleaner of gloves and laces, a dyer, a
bird-seller, a mattress-maker, an upholsterer, a dancing-teacher, a
florist--"

"O