ld beads and repeated prayers. Only a
certain sort of infantile superstitiousness of nature remained in her,
and made her cling to the forms, in which, though she knew they did not
mean what they pretended, she suspected there might be some sort of
mechanical efficacy at last; like the partly undeceived disciple and
assistant of a master juggler, who is not quite sure that there may not
be a supernatural power behind some of the tricks. Beyond an overflowing
animal vitality, and a passion for having men make love to her, there
really was not much of Victorine. But it is wonderful how far these two
qualities can pass in a handsome woman for other and nobler ones. The
animal life so keen, intense, sensuous, can seem like cleverness, wit,
taste; the passion for receiving homage from men can make a woman
graceful, amiable, and alluring. Some of the greatest passions the world
has ever seen have been inspired in men by just such women as this.

Victorine was not without accomplishments and some smattering of
knowledge. She had read a good deal of French, and chattered it like
the true granddaughter of a Normandy _proprietaire_. She sang, in a
half-rude, half-melodious way, snatches of songs which sounded better
than they really were, she sang them with so much heartiness and
abandon. She embroidered exquisitely, and had learned the trick of
making many of the pretty and useless things at which nuns work so
patiently to fill up their long hours. She had an insatiable love of
dress, and attired herself daily in successions of varied colors and
shapes merely to look at herself in the glass, and on the chance of
showing herself to any stray traveller who might come.

The inn had been built in a piecemeal fashion by Victor Dubois himself,
and he had been unconsciously guided all the while by his memories of
the old farmhouse in Normandy in which he was born; so that the house
really looked more like Normandy than like America. It had on one corner
a square tower, which began by being a shed attached to the kitchen,
then was promoted to bearing up a chamber for grain, and at last was
topped off by a fine airy room, projecting on all sides over the other
two, and having great casement windows reaching close up to the broad,
hanging eaves. A winding staircase outside led to what had been the
grain-chamber: this was now Jeanne's room. The room above was
Victorine's, and she reached it only by a narrow, ladder-like stairway
from her