, as she lay, utterly prostrated, in her invalid's
chair, her voice hardly more than a breath.

"You shall go, my dear child."

And go she would, and look lovelier than ever before.

"Doctor, at any price, even if it's the death of me, I must be at the
council of ministers to-morrow morning."

He would be there and would win new triumphs by his eloquence and
ambitious diplomacy. And afterward--oh! afterward, indeed. But no
matter! to their last day Jenkins' patients went about, showed
themselves, deceived the consuming selfishness of the multitude. They
died on their feet, like men and women of the world.

After innumerable turns on the Chaussee d'Antin and Champs-Elysees,
after visiting all the millionaires and titled personages in Faubourg
Saint-Honore, the doctor drew up at the corner of Cours-la-Reine and
Rue Francois I., before a house with a swell front which stood at
the corner of the quay, and entered an apartment on the ground floor
which in no wise resembled those he had visited since the morning.
Immediately upon entering, the tapestries that covered the walls, the
old stained glass windows intersecting with their lead sashes the soft,
many-hued light, a gigantic saint in carved wood facing a Japanese
monster with bulging eyes and back covered with highly polished scales,
indicated the imaginative and eccentric taste of an artist. The small
servant who opened the door held in leash an Arabian greyhound larger
than himself.

"Madame Constance is at mass," he said, "and mademoiselle is in the
studio, alone. We have been working since six o'clock this morning,"
the child added, with a terrible yawn, which the dog caught on the
wing, and which caused him to open wide his red mouth with its rows of
sharp teeth.

Jenkins, whom we have seen enter the private apartments of the Minister
of State with such perfect tranquillity, trembled slightly as he raised
the portiere that hid the open doorway of the studio. It was a
magnificent sculptor's workroom, the rounded front being entirely of
glass, with columns at either side: a large bay-window flooded with
light and at that moment tinged with opal by the mist. More ornate than
the majority of these workrooms, to which the daubs of plaster, the
modelling tools, the clay scattered about and the splashes of water
give something of the appearance of a mason's yard, this one blended a
little coquetry with its artistic equipment. Green plants in every
corner, a few go