o explain the peculiarities of the French
temperament."

"Yes, but all the letters in the letter-box would be English or German,
as Hendy says."

Bertha glanced at Miriam. Miriam flushed. She could not discuss
Mademoiselle with two of the girls at once.

"Rum go," said Bertha.

"You're right, my son. It's rum. It's all over now, anyhow. There's no
accounting for tastes. Poor old Petite."

5

Miriam woke in the moonlight. She saw Mademoiselle's face as it had
looked at tea-time, pale and cruel, silent and very old. Someone
had said she had been in Fraulein's room again all the afternoon....
Fraulein had spoken to her once or twice during tea. She had answered
coolly and eagerly... disgusting... like a child that had been whipped
and forgiven.... How could Fraulein dare to forgive anybody?

She lay motionless. The night was cool. The screens had not been moved.
She felt that the door was shut. After a while she began in imagination
a conversation with Eve.

"You see the trouble _was,"_ she said and saw Eve's downcast believing
admiring sympathetic face, "Fraulein talked to me about manner, she
simply wanted me to grimace, _simply._ _You_ know--be like other
people."

Eve laughed. "Yes, I know."

"You see? _Simply."_

"Well, if you wanted to stay, why couldn't you?"

"I simply couldn't; you know how people are."

"But you can act so splendidly."

"But you can't keep it up."

"Why not?"

_"Eve._ There you are, you see, you always go back."

"I mean I think it would be simply lovely. If I were clever like you I
should do it all the time, be simply always gushing and 'charming'."

Then she reminded Eve of the day they had walked up the lane to the
Heath talking over all the manners they would like to have--and how
Sarah suddenly in the middle of supper had caricatured the one they had
chosen. "Of course you overdid it," she concluded, and Eve crimsoned and
said, "Oh yes, I know it was my fault. But you could have begun all over
again in Germany and been quite different."

"Yes, I know I thought about that.... But if you knew as much of the
world as I do...."

Eve stared, showing a faint resentment.

Miriam thought of Eve's many suitors, of her six months' betrothal, of
her lifelong peacemaking, her experiment in being governess to the two
children of an artist--a little green-robed boy threatening her with a
knife.

"Yes, but I mean if you had been about."

"I know," smiled Eve confident