m for the first five years. Our American women have no physique.
They are lilies, pallid, pretty--and perishable. You marry an American
woman, and what do you marry? A headache. Look at English girls. They
are at least roses, and last the season through." Walking home from the
theatre that first night, it flitted through Van Twiller's mind that if
he could give this girl's set of nerves and muscles to any one of the
two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would marry her on the spot and
worship her forever.

The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again. "Olympe
Zabriski," he soliloquized, as he sauntered through the lobby--"what a
queer name! Olympe is French, and Zabriski is Polish. It is her _nom de
guerre_, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones. What kind of
creature can she be in private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears
that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a
horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze."
And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle
Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the curtain rose.

This was on a Friday. There was a matinee the next day, and he attended
that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.
Then it became a habit of Van Twiller's to drop into the theatre for
half an hour or so every night, to assist at the interlude, in which
she appeared. He cared only for her part of the programme, and timed his
visits accordingly. It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one
morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle
Olympe for nearly two weeks.

"This will never do," said Van Twiller. "Olympe"--he called her
Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been
considered by that time--"is a wonderful creature; but this will never
do. Van, my boy, you must reform this altogether."

But half past nine that night saw him in his accustomed orchestra
chair, and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the
beginning that he does not perceive he is led--with what silken threads
and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by the soft silk
threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!

Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller's enjoyment of
Mademoiselle Olympe's ingenious feats--a vaguely born apprehension
that she might slip from that swinging ba