ted that Van Twiller was going to
Europe; and go he did. A dozen of us went down to the Scythia to see him
off. It was refreshing to have something as positive as the fact that
Van Twiller had sailed.

II.

Shortly after Van Twiller's departure the whole thing came out.
Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it
transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer
Vanzandt Van Twiller, I cannot say; but one evening the entire story was
in the possession of the club.

Van Twiller had actually been very deeply interested--not in an actress,
for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in life, but--in
Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really perilous feats on the trapeze
had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to
attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on
the trail of Van Twiller's mystery.

That a man like Van Twiller should be fascinated even for an instant by
a common circus-girl seems incredible; but it is always the incredible
thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle Olympe was not a common
circus-girl; she was a most daring and startling gymnaste, with a beauty
and a grace of movement that gave to her audacious performance almost
an air of prudery. Watching her wondrous dexterity and pliant strength,
both exercised without apparent effort, it seemed the most natural
proceeding in the world that she should do those unpardonable things.
She had a way of melting from one graceful posture into another, like
the dissolving figures thrown from a stereopticon. She was a lithe,
radiant shape out of the Grecian mythology, now poised up there above
the gaslights, and now gleaming through the air like a slender gilt
arrow.

I am describing Mademoiselle Olympe as she appeared to Van Twiller
on the first occasion when he strolled into the theatre where she was
performing. To me she was a girl of eighteen or twenty years of age
(maybe she was much older, for pearl-powder and distance keep these
people perpetually young), slightly but exquisitely built, with sinews
of silver wire; rather pretty, perhaps, after a manner, but showing
plainly the effects of the exhaustive drafts she was making on her
physical vitality. Now, Van Twiller was an enthusiast on the subject of
calisthenics. "If I had a daughter," Van Twiller used to say, "I would
n't send her to a boarding-school, or a nunnery; I 'd send her to a
gymnasiu