o
forget."

"The less easy to forget," corrected madam. He paid no attention
to the remark.

"They are the women that attach themselves in one's memory. If
necessary to keep from being forgotten, they come back into one's
dreams. And as life rolls on, one wonders about them,--'Is she happy?
Is she miserable? Goes life well or ill with her?'"

Madame played her cards slowly, one would say, for her, prosaically.

"And there is always a pang when, as one is so wondering, the response
comes,--that is, the certainty in one's heart responds,--'She is
miserable, and life goes ill with her.' Then, if ever, men envy the
power of God."

Madame threw over the game she was in, and began a new one.

"Such women should not be unhappy; they are too fragile, too
sensitive, too trusting. I could never understand the infliction
of misery upon them. I could send death to them, but not--not
misfortune."

Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began
impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal.

"And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of
life. They seem predestined to it, as others"--looking at madame's
full-charmed portrait--"are predestined to triumph and victory.
They"--unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his
simile--"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a
losing game."

"Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation.

"It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that
are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired
ones!"

As his voice sank lower and lower, the room seemed to become stiller
and stiller. A passing vehicle in the street, however, now and then
drew a shiver of sound from the pendent prisms of the chandelier.

"She was so slight, so fragile, and always in white, with blue in her
hair to match her eyes--and--God knows what in her heart, all the
time. And yet they stand it, they bear it, they do not die, they live
along with the strongest, the happiest, the most fortunate of us,"
bitterly; "and"--raising his eyes to his old friend, who thereupon
immediately began to fumble her cards--"whenever in the street I see
a poor, bent, broken woman's figure, I know, without verifying it
any more by a glance, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's figure;
whenever I hear of a bent, broken existence, I know, without asking
any more, that it is the wreck of a fair woman's