have
a bad heart, a bad nature! Yes, yes, that must be it! I have a bad
nature, Sara, a bad, bad nature!"

"No, no, Pauline!" said her friend soothingly, and the matter dropped.

Later they were sitting, towards evening, sewing at some item of the
impalpable trousseau, Pauline alternating her spasmodic needle with
reading over Mme. Prefontaine's letter and jumping up to listen down
the stair.

"What do you expect's happened, anyhow?" cried Miss Cordova at last, in
exasperation. "Mr. Ringfield's a clergyman! he's a perfectly moral
man, and I guess that means something. What are you afraid of? Now if
it was me and Schenk or Stanbury----"

Pauline's attitude and expression were alike tragic. In her cheap
black dress her look of apprehensive despair was full of mournful
intensity as she stood with one hand lifted and her expressive eyes
fixed on shapes imaginary. Her friend's philosophy was equal to the
occasion.

"Seems to me if you think so much about things that _might_ happen but
you ain't sure they _have_ happened, you kind of _make_ 'em happen.
Sit down and be calm, for goodness sake, Pauline!"

"I can't, I can't! Oh, what's that now?"

With her hands over her heart she bounded to the top of the narrow
stair.

"Reminds me of myself the other day when I thought Schenk was after me.
Do you hear anything, Pauline--you look so wild?"

"Yes, yes! Some one has arrived. _Grand Dieu_--which of them?
Sara--go and see!"

Miss Cordova rose and drew her friend back within the room.

"Maybe it's neither; only some one for M. Poussette."

"No, no, it is one of them and for me. I hear my name."

She sank upon a chair as footsteps were heard slowly, heavily, and
somewhat unsteadily ascending the stair. The arrival was Edmund
Crabbe, with the lurch of recent dissipation in his gait and his blue
eyes still inflamed and bleared.

With a half-furtive, half-defiant air he advanced to Pauline, but
before he could utter a word, either of justification or apology, she
sprang at him with impetuous gestures and deeply frowning brows. To
see her thus, in the common little room at Poussette's, clad in the
plain garb of cheap mourning, yet with all the instinctive fire and
grandeur of the emotional artist, was to recall her as many could,
declaiming on the narrow stage of the Theatre of Novelties.

Je suis Romaine, helas! puisque Horace est Romain.
J'ai recevu son titre en recevant sa main,

or again, in the