dence and it is not to go any further. For people in
restaurant-cars she is any age she thinks proper at the moment, they do
not matter, but she will never deceive her friends.

Her sister's husband was a man of real insight; he divined that Mery was
a heaven-inspired dancer, and devoted himself to the development of her
genius. She did not say he had taught her to dance; she said he
encouraged and developed her natural genius for dancing. She made her
debut with a success which the newspapers declared to be even more
"phenomenal" than that which attends the debut of every artist.
Engagements followed, and soon she was dancing practically all over the
globe, creating a furore wherever she went and leaving the younger
children's socks to wash and darn themselves. Her mother was too ill and
her legal father too drunk to know what she was doing or where she was
doing it, but His Eminence heard and was so much scandalised that when
she danced into the Eternal City the doors of the Vatican were closed to
her. Cardinals are delightful men, most of them--and Mery knows because
she is on terms of intimacy with every member of the College--but too
frequently they have a fault; they do not understand the artistic
temperament. Nevertheless, if her uncle could have heard the cheers that
greeted her in Shanghai and New York, and the encores that called her
back in Cairo and Calcutta, if he could have seen the flowers that choked
the wheels of her carriage in St. Petersburg and the diamonds that were
showered upon her in Brazil, even his commonplace heart must have been
moved.

She did not dance for us because, it seems, they do not dance when they
are resting, which was perhaps the psychological reason, but there was
also a geographical reason in the want of space, for the room was small
and contained, besides Mery and Etna in one arm-chair, another arm-chair
and two ordinary chairs occupied by her visitors; also there was the
chest of drawers on which she had made the coffee and all such other
articles of furniture as one usually sees in a hotel bedroom, including
two beds. The extra bed was there because Mery was, she confessed it, of
luxurious habits and in the hot weather liked to be able to change and
finish the night in a cool bed.

Here there came a pause, not that she was exhausted, but something had
happened about the little dog, who required attention. When Etna's
business had been settled I thought it might be t