it. I have had ten bad years--ten hateful years. You don't know how I
have hated it all, this business, this drudgery, this cut-and-dried,
methodical existence--moi, enfant de Boheme! But, enfin, it was
obligatory. Now we will change all that. Nous reviendrons a nos
premieres amours. I shall have ten good years--ten years of barefaced
pleasure. Then--I will range myself--perhaps. There is the darlingest
little house for sale, a sort of chalet, built of red brick, with
pointed windows and things, in the Rue de Lisbonne. I shall buy
it--furnish it--decorate it. Oh, you will see. I shall have my
carriage, I shall have toilets, I shall entertain, I shall give
dinners--olala! No more boarders, no more bores, cares,
responsibilities. Only my friends and--_life_! I feel like one
emerging from ten years in the galleys, ten years of penal servitude.
To the Pension Childe--bonsoir!'

'That's all very well for you,' her listener complained sombrely. 'But
for me? Where shall I stop when I come to Paris?'

'With me. You shall be my guest. I will kill you if you ever go
elsewhere. You shall pass your old age in a big chair in the best
room, and Camille and I will nurse your gout and make herb-tea for
you.'

'And I shall sit and think of what might have been.'

'Yes, we'll indulge all your little foibles. You shall sit and "feel
foolish"--from dawn to dewy eve.'

XII.

If you had chanced to be walking in the Bois-de-Boulogne this
afternoon, you might have seen a smart little basket-phaeton flash
past, drawn by two glossy frays, and driven by a woman--a woman with
sparkling eyes, a lovely colour, great quantities of soft dark hair,
and a figure--

'Helas, mon pere, la taille d'une deesse'--

a smiling woman, in a wonderful blue-grey toilet, grey driving gloves,
and a bold-brimmed grey-felt hat with waving plumes. And in the man
beside her you would have recognised your servant. You would have
thought me in great luck, perhaps you would have envied me.
But--_esse, quam videri_!--I would I were as enviable as I looked.

MERCEDES

When I was a child some one gave me a family of white mice. I don't
remember how old I was, I think about ten or eleven; but I remember
very clearly the day I received them. It must have been a Thursday, a
half-holiday, for I had come home from school rather early in the
afternoon. Alexandre, dear old ruddy round-faced Alexandre, who opened
the door for me, smiled in a way that seeme