enuated frame straightened,
his hand shook violently and, the glasses fell from his nerveless
fingers.

"Impossible!" he murmured. But the melody of those tones continued to
fall upon his ears like a voice from the past.

When the curtain went down on the first act there was a storm of
applause. In New Orleans nothing was done by halves, and Constance,
as Adrienne Lecouvreur, radiant in youth and the knowledge of
success, was called out several times. The creoles made a vigorous
demonstration; the Americans were as pleased in their less impulsive
way; and in the loges all the lattices were pushed up, "a compliment
to any player," said Straws. To the marquis, the ladies in the
_loges_ were only reminiscent of the fashionable dames, with bare
shoulders and glittering jewels, in the side boxes of old Drury
Lane, leaning from their high tribunals to applaud the Adrienne of
twenty years ago!

He did not sit in a theater in New Orleans now, but in London town,
with a woman by his side who bent beneath the storm of words she knew
were directed at her. As in a dream he lingered, plunged in thought,
with no longer the cynical, carping expression on his face as he
looked at the stage, but awed and wonder-stricken, transported to
another scene through the lapse of years that folded their shadowy
wings and made the past to-day. Two vivid pictures floated before him
as though they belonged to the present: Adrienne, bright, smiling and
happy, as she rushed into the green room, with the plaudits of the
multitude heard outside; Adrienne, in her last moments, betrayed to
death!

They were applauding now, or was it but the mocking echo of the past?
The curtain had descended, but went up again, and the actress stood
with flowers showered around her. Save that she was in the springtime
of life, while the other had entered summer's season; that her art was
tender and romantic, rather than overwhelming and tragic, she was the
counterpart of the actress he had deserted in London; a faithful
prototype, bearing the mother's eyes, brow and features; a moving,
living picture of the dead, as though the grave had rolled back its
stone and she had stepped forth, young once more, trusting and
innocent.

The musical bell rang in the wine room, where the worshipers of
Bacchus were assembled, the signal that the drop would rise again in
five minutes. At the bar the imbibers were passing judgment.

"What elegance, deah boy! But cold--give me Fan