l wrought unconsciously with the mother's love within
her to force her into a path where new sufferings awaited her. But her
nature was too noble, her mind too fastidious, and, above all things,
too open, to be the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed
as she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice--for vice it
was--the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor of the
passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife whose heart is
still pure, whose love has never been mated, the very sentiment of
motherhood is overpowered by modesty. Modesty; is not all womanhood
summed up in that? But just now Julie would not see any danger, anything
wrong, in her life.

She went to Mme. de Serizy's concert. Her rival had expected to see a
pallid, drooping woman. The Marquise wore rouge, and appeared in all the
splendor of a toilet which enhanced her beauty.

Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to exercise a sort of
sway over fashions and society in Paris; she issued her decrees, saw
them received in her own circle, and it seemed to her that all the world
obeyed them. She aspired to epigram, she set up for an authority in
matters of taste. Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were
submitted to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the
censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model of good
taste.

Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was
with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie's liveliness and
sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about
her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one
and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded
outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for
women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons
than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath.

When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona's song, the men in the
rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated voice so long mute, and
there was a deep silence. The Marquise saw the heads clustered thickly
in the doorways, saw all eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of
excitement quivered through her. She looked for her husband, gave him
a coquettish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was
gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang the first
part of _Al piu salice_. Her