!"

At table Jeanne plagued her mother with questions. Where had she been?
what had she been about? However, as the answers she received proved
somewhat curt, she began to amuse herself by giving a little dinner.
Her doll was perched near her on a chair, and in a sisterly fashion
she placed half of her dessert before it.

"Now, mademoiselle, you must eat like a lady. See, wipe your mouth.
Oh, the dirty little thing! She doesn't even know how to wear her
napkin! There, you're nice now. See, here is a biscuit. What do you
say? You want some preserve on it. Well, I should think it better as
it is! Let me pare you a quarter of this apple!"

She placed the doll's share on the chair. But when she had emptied her
own plate she took the dainties back again one after the other and
devoured them, speaking all the time as though she were the doll.

"Oh! it's delicious! I've never eaten such nice jam! Where did you get
this jam, madame? I shall tell my husband to buy a pot of it. Do those
beautiful apples come from your garden, madame?"

She fell asleep while thus playing, and stumbled into the bedroom with
the doll in her arms. She had given herself no rest since morning. Her
little legs could no longer sustain her--she was helpless and wearied
to death. However, a ripple of laughter passed over her face even in
sleep; in her dreams she must have been still continuing her play.

At last Helene was alone in her room. With closed doors she spent a
miserable evening beside the dead fire. Her will was failing her;
thoughts that found no utterance were stirring within the innermost
recesses of her heart. At midnight she wearily sought her bed, but
there her torture passed endurance. She dozed, she tossed from side to
side as though a fire were beneath her. She was haunted by visions
which sleeplessness enlarged to a gigantic size. Then an idea took
root in her brain. In vain did she strive to banish it; it clung to
her, surged and clutched her at the throat till it entirely swayed
her. About two o'clock she rose, rigid, pallid, and resolute as a
somnambulist, and having again lighted the lamp she wrote a letter in
a disguised hand; it was a vague denunciation, a note of three lines,
requesting Doctor Deberle to repair that day to such a place at such
an hour; there was no explanation, no signature. She sealed the
envelope and dropped the letter into the pocket of her dress which was
hanging over an arm-chair. Then returning to be