e of a child that sleeps,
dresses itself, goes for a walk, eats sweets and plays with its dolls.
They are good-natured as well as frivolous, lissom of mind as well as of
body, indulgent to others and charming in themselves. Love, resting on
their young and tender lives, makes them more tender yet, like the light
that lingers long and fondly upon a soft-tinted pastel.

Next comes the turn of Marcienne, who, greatly daring, has broken with
her family and given up worldly luxury, to work and live freely with the
man of her choice.

Beside her is Blanche, still restless and undecided, attracted by love
and irritated by her sister Hermione, who pursues a vision of charity
and redemption.

Here my friend's fine profile turns to the other groups; and I continue:

"The one whom we call Sister Hermione you can see in the dark bedroom,
reading under the light of the lamp, with her face hidden in her
hands."

"Is she good-looking?"

"Very, but tries not to seem so. That is why she is always so simply
dressed."

Cecilia interrupts me:

"But her dress isn't simple!"

"You are quite right. It is made complex by a thousand superfluous
fripperies. Hermione has not been slow to understand that, to counteract
perfect beauty, you must read simplicity to mean commonplace
triviality."

A flutter of silk, a gleam of a silver-white skirt in the waning light,
a whiff of orris-root; and Marcienne glides down to our feet with a
lithe, cat-like movement. In a curt, passionate tone, she says:

"You are speaking of Hermione. Oh, do try and persuade her sister not to
go the same way: is not one enough? Must more loveliness be wasted?"

Sitting on a cushion on the floor, she raises her glowing face, her eyes
dark as night, her scarlet mouth, her dazzling pallor.

"I shall do nothing of the sort," I answer with a laugh, "for I rather
like Hermione's folly; besides, her reason will soon conquer it! The
dangers we run depend on chance; the first roads we take depend on
influences. The way in which we bear those dangers and return from those
roads: that is where the interest begins!"

"But, tell me," murmurs Cecilia, "what does your Hermione want?"

"Here is her story, in a couple of words," says Marcienne. "She is rich,
beautiful and talented; and she belongs to an aristocratic English
family. At twenty, she yielded to an impulse and went on the stage; in a
few months, she was a really successful actress; then she made the
acquaintan