t his eyes were a tragedy, filled as they were with an anguish of
helpless love.

For a sad moment he gazed at her silently--then he was counting drops
from a bottle, holding smelling-salts to her pinched nostrils, removing
her riding-boots, indeed, deftly filling the place not only of nurse, but
dressing-maid, and as the wanness gradually faded from her weary face,
bravely ignoring her own feelings, she made a little joke or two, then
gave me hearty thanks for coming to her rescue, as she called it, praised
my effort at acting, and asked me how I liked a crying part.

"Oh, I don't like it at all," I answered.

"Ah," she sighed, "we never like what we do best; that's why I can never
be contented in elegant light comedy, but must strain and fret after
dramatic, tragic, and pathetic parts--and to think that a young,
untrained girl should step out of obscurity and without an effort do what
I have failed in all these years!"

I stood aghast. "Why--why, Miss St. Clair!" I exclaimed, "you have
applause and applause every night of your life!"

"Oh," she laughed, "you foolish child, it's not the applause I'm thinking
of, but something finer, rarer. You have won tears, my dear, a thing I
have never done in all my life, and never shall, no, never, I see that
now!"

"I wish I had not!" I answered, remorsefully and quite honestly, because
I was quite young and unselfish yet, and I loved her, and she understood
and leaned over and kissed my cheek, and told me not to bury my talent,
but to make good use of it by and by when I was older and free to choose
a line of business. "Though," she added, "even here I'll wager it's few
comedy parts that will come your way after to-night, young lady." And
then I left her.

That same night I heard that a dread disease already abode with her, and
slept and waked and went and came with her, and would not be shaken off,
but clung ever closer and closer; and, oh! poor Charles Barras! money
might have saved her then--money right then might have saved this woman
of his love, and God only knows how desperately he struggled, but the
money came not. Then, worse still, Sallie was herself the bread-winner,
and though Mr. Barras worked hard, doing writing and translating, acting
as agent, as nurse, as maid, playing, too, in a two-act comedy, "The
Hypochondriac," he still felt the sting of living on his wife's earnings,
and she had, too, a mother and an elder sister to support; therefore she
worked on