ger gently, "especially when there are so many listeners."

"Oh, the larger my audience the better I like it," rejoined Lemoine.
"I have all an actor's vanity in that respect. I say what I think, and
I don't care who hears me."

"Yes; but you forget that we are, in a measure, guests of this
country, and we should not abuse our hosts, or the man who represents
them."

"Ah, does he represent them? It seems to me that begs the whole
question; that's just what the war is about. The general opinion is
that Balmaceda misrepresents them, and that the country would be glad
to be rid of him."

"That may all be," said the manager almost in a whisper, for he was a
man evidently inclined towards peace; "but it does not rest with us
to say so. We are French, and I think therefore it is better not to
express an opinion."

"I'm not French," cried Lemoine. "I'm a native Chilian, and I have a
right to abuse my own country if I choose to do so."

"All the more reason, then," said the manager, looking timorously over
his shoulder--"all the more reason that you should be careful what you
say."

"I suppose," said Dupre, by way of putting an end to the discussion,
"it is time for us to get our war paint on. Come along, Lemoine,
and lecture me on our mutual art, and stop talking politics--if the
nonsense you utter about Chili and its President is politics."

[Illustration: "MY GOD!--YOU WERE RIGHT--AFTER ALL."]

The two actors entered the theatre; they occupied the same
dressing-room, and the volatile Lemoine talked incessantly. Although
there were but few people in the stalls, the gallery was well filled,
as was usually the case. When going on for the last act in the final
scene, Dupre whispered a word to the man who controlled the falling of
the curtain; and when the actor, as the villain of the piece, received
the fatal knife-thrust from the ill-used heroine, he plunged forward
on his face and died without a struggle, to the amazement of the
manager, who was watching the play from the front of the house, and
to the evident bewilderment of the gallery, who had counted on an
exciting struggle with death. Much as they desired the cutting off of
the villain, they were not pleased to see him so suddenly shift
his worlds without an agonizing realization of the fact that he was
quitting an existence in which he had done nothing but evil. The
curtain came down upon the climax, but there was no applause, and the
audience silently filter