the boulevard, and the corps
de ballet. She would not lose him. "But, oh, Fred!" she cried, "it is not
to be wondered at that he is so fond of you! You spoil him! You will be a
devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for marriage."

She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d'Argy
would like her to say.

"In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me," he said,
one day; "and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women--I
mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice--are
indifferent to me. My feeling almost amounts to antipathy."

For the first time she ventured to say: "Do you still care for
Jacqueline?"

"About as much as she cares for me," he answered, dryly. "No, I made a
mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future."

Another day he said:

"I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved."

Giselle did not look up; she was devoting all her attention to
Enguerrand.

Fred held certain theories which he used to talk about. He believed in a
high, spiritual, disinterested affection which would raise a man above
himself, making him more noble, inspiring a disgust for all ignoble
pleasures. The woman willing to accept such homage might do anything she
pleased with a heart that would be hers alone. She would be the lady who
presided over his life, for whose sake all good deeds and generous
actions would be done, the idol, higher than a wife or any object of
earthly passion, the White Angel whom poets have sung.

Giselle pretended that she did not understand him, but she was divinely
happy. This, then, was the reward of her spotless life! She was the
object of a worship no less tender than respectful. Fred spoke of the
woman he ought to have loved as if he meant to say, "I love you;" he
pressed his lips on the auburn curls of little Enguerrand where his
mother had just kissed him. Day after day he seemed more attracted to
that salon where, dressed with more care than she had ever dressed
before, she expected him. Then awoke in her the wish to please, and she
was beautiful with that beauty which is not the insipid beauty of St.
Agnes, but that which, superior to all other, is seen when the face
reflects the soul. All that winter there was a new Giselle--a Giselle who
passed away again among the shadows, a Giselle of whom everybody said,
even her husband, "Ma foi! but she is beautiful!" Oscar de Talbrun, as he
made this