just the same
as of old--incorrigible."

"Then why try to improve me?" said the other with a show of lightness.
But almost simultaneously she turned away from Madeleine's
matter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief over her lips, and after
making a vain attempt to control herself, burst into tears.

Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. "What's the matter with you?"

But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely shook her
head, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such emotional outbreaks were
distasteful, went to the writing-table and busied herself there, with
her back to the room. She did not ask for an explanation, nor did her
companion offer any.

Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint as
though she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes with both
hands and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had apparently been held
for some time in cheek.

Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her face on
her hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive breath,
watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she took the cup that was
handed to her, she was so far herself again as to inquire whom she was
to have met, although her voice still did not obey her properly.

"Some one who is anxious to know you," replied Madeleine an air of
mystery. "But he couldn't, or rather would not, wait so long."

Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said with
meaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the course of the
afternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed.

"What! Does he still exist?" she asked with an effort at playfulness.

"As you very well know," answered Madeleine drily. "Tell me, Louise,
how do you manage to keep out of his way?"

Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, and the dark
blood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowly
retreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, dark
eyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her,
asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclear
irritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she had
never thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way--at
best, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black of eyes
and hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile mouth--and some
people, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been known
to cal