ount to an inquiring why. I don't
know why I told her; it did not appear to be a matter requiring any
thought or consideration. I spoke merely because Tenise came into my
mind at the moment. But after that, the deluge; I shudder when I think
of it."

"Again the why?" said the poet's friend. "Why not cease to think of
conciliating your wife? Russians are unreasoning aborigines. Why not
take up life in a simple poetic way with Tenise, and avoid the Rue de
Russie altogether?"

Caspilier sighed gently. Here fate struck him hard. "Alas! my friend,
it is impossible. Tenise is an artist's model, and those brutes of
painters who get such prices for their daubs, pay her so little each
week that her wages would hardly keep me in food and drink. My paper,
pens, and ink I can get at the cafes, but how am I to clothe myself? If
Valdoreme would but make us a small allowance, we could be so happy.
Valdoreme is madame, as I have so often told her, and she owes me
something for that; but she actually thinks that because a man is
married he should come dutifully home like a bourgeois grocer. She has
no poetry, no sense of the needs of a literary man, in her nature."

Lacour sorrowfully admitted that the situation had its embarrassments.
The first glass of absinthe did not show clearly how they were to be
met, but the second brought bravery with it, and he nobly offered to
beard the Russian lioness in her den, explain the view Paris took of
her unjustifiable conduct, and, if possible, bring her to reason.

Caspilier's emotion overcame him, and he wept silently, while his
friend, in eloquent language, told how famous authors, whose names were
France's proudest possession, had been forgiven by their wives for
slight lapses from strict domesticity, and these instances, he said, he
would recount to Madame Valdoreme, and so induce her to follow such
illustrious examples.

The two comrades embraced and separated; the friend to use his
influence and powers of persuasion with Valdoreme; the husband to tell
Tenise how blessed they were in having such a friend to intercede for
them; for Tenise, bright little Parisienne that she was, bore no malice
against the unreasonable wife of her lover.

Henri Lacour paused opposite the pastry-shop on the Rue de Russie that
bore the name of "Valdoreme" over the temptingly filled windows. Madame
Caspilier had not changed the title of her well-known shop when she
gave up her own name. Lacour caught sight o