movie-show beautifully presented the matchless Bernhardt as a widowed
shopkeeper--like Mme. Alexandre, but with a son, not daughter, in love.

The door-bell rang. Castanado went down to the street. There, letting
in a visitor, he spoke with such animation that madame, listening from
her special seat, guessed, and before the two were half up-stairs knew,
who it was. It was Melanie Alexandre.

No one answered her mother's bell, she said, kissing madame
lingeringly, twice on the forehead and once on either vast cheek. She
was short and square, with such serene kindness of face and voice as to
be the last you would ever pick out to fall into a mistake of passion,
however exalted. Of course, that serenity may have come since the
mistake. Both Castanados seemed to take note of it as if it had come
since, and she to be willing they should note it.

"No," they said, "Mme. Alexandre had gone with Dubroca and his wife to
that movie of Sarah."

"And also with M. Beloiseau?" asked Melanie, with a lurking smile, as
she sat down so fondly close to madame as to leave both her small hands
in one of her friend's.

"Ah, now," madame exclaimed, "there is nothing in that! You ought to
be rijoice' if there was."

The new look warmed in Melanie's eyes. "I'll be very glad if that time
ever comes," she said.

"Then you billieve in the second love?"

"Ah, in a case like that! Indeed, yes. In their first love they both
were happy; the second would be in praise of the first."

"And to separate them there is only the street," Castanado suggested,
"and Royal Street, street of their birth and chilehood, and so narrow,
it have the effect to join, not separate. But!"--he made a wary
motion--"kip quite, eize they will not go into the net, those old
bird', hah!"

There was a smiling silence, and then--"Well," madame said, "they are
all to stop here as they riturn. Waiting here, you'll see them all."

"Yes, and beside', I have some good news for you; news anyhow to me."

The pair smiled brightly: "You 'ave another letter from Dubroca!"

"Yes. He's again wounded and in hospital."

"Oh-h, terrible! tha'z to you good news?"

"Yes. Look, monsieur; he has, at the front, the chance to be hit so
many times. If he's hit and only wounded his chances to be hit again
are made one less, eh? And while he's in hospital they are again two
or three less. Shall we not be glad for that? And moreover, how he
got his wound, that is bett