eeded in the assassination of the
non-existent!"

"You, who have praised it a thousand times--you deny the existence of
my genius?" almost shrieked M. Destournelle. He was very much in
earnest, and in a very sorry case. His limbs twitched. He appeared on
the verge of an hysteric seizure. To plague him thus was a charmingly
pretty sport, but one safest carried on with closed doors--not in so
public a spot.

"I do not deny the existence of anything, save your right to make a
scene and render me ridiculous as you repeatedly did at Pisa."

"Then you must return to me."

"Oh! la, la!" cried Helen.

"That you should leave me and live in your cousin's house constitutes
an intolerable insult."

"And where, pray, would you have me live?" she retorted, her temper
rising, to the detriment of diplomacy. "In the street?"

"It appears to me the two localities are synonymous--morally."

Madame de Vallorbes drew up. Rage almost choked her. M. Destournelle's
words stung the more fiercely because the insinuation they contained
was not justified by fact. They brought home to her her non-success in
a certain direction. They called up visions of that unknown rival, to
whom--ah, how she hated the woman!--Richard Calmady's affections were,
as she feared, still wholly given. That her relation to him was
innocent, filled her with humiliation. First she turned to Zelie
Forestier, who had followed at a discreet distance across the piazza.

"Go on," she said, "down the street. Find a cab, a clean one. Wait in
it for me at the bottom of the hill."

Then she turned upon M. Destournelle.

"Your mind is so corrupt that you cannot conceive of an honest
friendship, even between near relations. You fill me with repulsion--I
measured the depth of your degeneracy at Pisa. That is why I left you.
I wanted to breathe in an uninfected atmosphere. My cousin is a person
of remarkable intellectual powers, of chivalrous ideals, and of
superior character. He has had great troubles. He is far from well. I
am watching over and nursing him."

The last statement trenched boldly on fiction. As she made it Madame de
Vallorbes moved forward, intending to follow the retreating Zelie down
the steep, narrow street. For a minute M. Destournelle paused to
recollect his ideas. Then he went quickly after her.

"Stay, I implore you," he said. "Yes, I own at Pisa I lost myself. The
agitation of composition was too much for me. My mind seethed with
ideas. I became