he had come back.

Neither of the girls was thinking of the student, their neighbor; but
he was not only wakened by their voices, he amused himself by comparing
them and their utterances with his preconceived notions of the girls.
They might not have recognized him in the street, though they had often
passed him on the stairs; but he certainly could have distinguished the
pretty face of Elsie, or the strange face of Jacqueline, wherever he
might meet them.

Elsie ran on with her story, not careful to inquire into the mood of
Jacqueline,--suspicious of that mood, no doubt,--but at last, made
breathless by her haste and agitation, she paused, looked anxiously at
Jacqueline, and finally said,--

"You think I ought not to have gone?"

"Oh, no,--it gave you pleasure."

A pause followed. It was broken at length by Elsie, exclaiming, in a
voice changed from its former speaking,--

"Jacqueline Gabrie, you are homesick! horribly homesick, Jacqueline!"

"You do not ask for Antonine: yet you know I went to spend the day with
her," said Jacqueline, very gravely.

"How is Antonine Dupre?" asked Elsie.

"She is dead. I have told you a good many times that she must die. Now,
she is dead."

"Dead?" repeated Elsie.

"You care as much as if a candle had gone out," said Jacqueline.

"She was as much to me as I to her," was the quick answer. "She never
liked me. She did not like my mother before me. When you told her my
name, the day we saw her first, I knew what she thought. So let that go.
If I could have done her good, though, I would, Jacqueline."

"She has everything she needs,--a great deal more than we have. She is
very happy, Elsie."

"Am not I? Are not you, in spite of your dreadful look? Your look is
more terrible than the lady's in the play, just before she killed
herself. Is that because Antonine is so well off?"

"I wish that I could be where she is," sighed Jacqueline.

"You? You are tired, Jacqueline. You look ill. You will not be fit for
to-morrow. Come to bed. It is late."

As Jacqueline made no reply to this suggestion, Elsie began to reflect
upon her words, and to consider wherefore and to whom she had spoken.
Not quite satisfied with herself could she have been, for at length she
said in quite another manner,--

"You always said, till now, you wished that you might live a hundred
years. But it was not because you were afraid to die, you said so,
Jacqueline."

"I don't know," was the answer,--sad