d. He was alone on the stage, in front of her. She gazed
at him steadily and saw in his eyes the passing gleam of a cruel smile.
The poor woman understood all. Sobs suffocated her.

She could only burst into tears and blindly disappear through the
crowded side scenes.

It was her own husband who had had her hissed!

[Illustration: p086-097]

[Illustration: p088-099]

A MISUNDERSTANDING -- THE WIFE'S VERSION.

What can be the matter with him? What can he complain of? I cannot
understand it. And yet I have done all I could to make him happy. To be
sure, I don't say that instead of a poet I would not rather have married
a notary or a lawyer, something rather more serious, rather less vague
as a profession; nevertheless, such as he was he took my fancy.
I thought him a trifle visionary, but charming all the same, and
well-mannered; besides he had some fortune, and I thought that once
married poetizing would not prevent him from seeking out some good
appointment which would set us quite at ease.

[Illustration: p089-100]

[Illustration: p090-101]

He, too at that time seemed to find me to his taste. When he came to see
me at my aunt's in the country, he could not find words enough to admire
the order and arrangement of our little house, kept like a convent, "It
is so quaint!" he used to say. He would laugh and call me all sorts of
names taken from the poems and romances he had read. That shocked me a
little I confess; I should have liked him to be more serious. But it
was not until we were married and settled in Paris, that I felt all the
difference of our two natures.

I had dreamed of a little home kept scrupulously bright and clean;
instead of which, he began at once to encumber our apartment with
useless old-fashioned furniture, covered with dust, and with faded
tapestries, old as the hills. In everything it was the same. Would you
believe that he obliged me to put away in the attic a sweetly
pretty Empire clock, which had come to me from my aunt, and some
splendidly-framed pictures given me by my school friends. He thought
them hideous. I am still wondering why? For after all, his study was one
mass of lumber, of old smoky pictures; statuettes I blushed to look at,
chipped antiquities of all kinds, good for nothing; vases that would not
hold water, odd cups, chandeliers covered with verdigris.

[Illustration: p094-105]

By the side of my beautiful rosewood piano, he had put another, a little
shabby