ger tutoring his actors as to the
tones they should speak in and the by-play they should introduce. The
day being dull, the small curtains of embroidered tulle had been
pulled aside and swung across the knobs of the window-fastenings, so
that the garden could be seen, dark and damp.

"You don't display sufficient emotion," declared Juliette. "Put a
little more meaning into it. Every word ought to tell. Begin again:
'I'm going to finish your toilette, my dear little purse.'"

"I shall be an awful failure," said Madame Berthier languidly. "Why
don't you play the part instead of me? You would make a delicious
Mathilda."

"I! Oh, no! In the first place, one needs to be fair. Besides, I'm a
very good teacher, but a bad pupil. But let us get on--let us get on!"

Helene sat still in her corner. Madame Berthier, engrossed in her
part, had not even turned round. Madame de Guiraud had merely honored
her with a slight nod. She realized that she was in the way, and that
she ought to have declined to stay. If she still remained, it was no
longer through the sense of a duty to be fulfilled, but rather by
reason of a strange feeling stirring vaguely in her heart's depth's--a
feeling which had previously thrilled her in this selfsame spot. The
unkindly greeting which Juliette had bestowed on her pained her.
However, the young woman's friendships were usually capricious; she
worshipped people for three months, threw herself on their necks, and
seemed to live for them alone; then one morning, without affording any
explanation, she appeared to lose all consciousness of being
acquainted with them. Without doubt, in this, as in everything else,
she was simply yielding to a fashionable craze, an inclination to love
the people who were loved by her own circle. These sudden veerings of
affection, however, deeply wounded Helene, for her generous and
undemonstrative heart had its ideal in eternity. She often left the
Deberles plunged in sadness, full of despair when she thought how
fragile and unstable was the basis of human love. And on this
occasion, in this crisis in her life, the thought brought her still
keener pain.

"We'll skip the scene with Chavigny," said Juliette. "He won't be here
this morning. Let us see Madame de Lery's entrance. Now, Madame de
Guiraud, here's your cue." Then she read from her book: "'Just imagine
my showing him this purse.'"

"'Oh! it's exceedingly pretty. Let me look at it,'" began Madame de
Guiraud in a