now out
loud?"

"Where's the use? Everybody here knows. I'll tell you another thing." He
leaned forward, still holding her wrist tightly. "Look at Struboff," he
said. "Look well at him."

"I am giving myself the pleasure of looking at M. Struboff," said
Coralie.

"Very well. When you die--because you'll grow old, and you'll grow ugly,
and at last, after you have become very ugly, you'll die."

Coralie looked rather vexed, a little perturbed and protesting. Wetter
had touched the one point on which she had troubled herself to criticise
the order of the universe.

"When, I say, you die," pursued Wetter, "when, after growing extremely
ugly, you die, you will be sent to hell because you have not appreciated
the virtues or repaid the devotion of my good friend M. Struboff. And,
sire" (he turned to me), "when one considers that, it appears
unreasonable to imagine that eternity will be in any degree less
peculiar than this present life of ours."

"That's all very well," said Coralie, "but after having grown ugly I
don't think I should mind anything else."

I clapped my hands.

"I think," said I, "if M. Struboff will pardon the supposition, that
madame will be allowed to escape perdition. For, see, she will stand up
and she will say quite calmly, with that adorable smile of hers----"

"They don't mind smiles there, sire," put in Varvilliers.

"She'll smile not to please them, but because she's amused," said I.
"She'll say with her adorable smile, 'This and that I have done, this
and that I have not done. Perhaps I did wrong, I have not studied your
rules. But you can't send me to hell.'"

They all appeared to be listening with attentive ears.

"Here's a good advocate," said Wetter. "Let us hear the plea."

"'You can't send me to hell because I have not pretended. I have been
myself, and I didn't make myself. I can't go to hell with the
pretenders.'"

"But to heaven with the kings?" asked Varvilliers.

"With the kings who have not also been pretenders," said I.

"_Nom de Dieu_," said she, "I believe that I shall escape, after all. So
you and I will be separated, Wetter."

"No, no," he protested. "Unless you're there the place won't be itself
to me."

We all laughed--Struboff not in appreciation, but with a nervous desire
to make himself agreeable--and I rose from my seat. It was three o'clock
in the morning. Struboff yawned mightily as he drank a final glass and
patted his stomach. I think that we were al