s coming?"

"Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a
meeting between him and Jansoulet."

"And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys----"

"Where have you come from? It is an intrigue known to all Paris. The
affair dates from the last exhibition, for which she did a bust of him."

"And the duchess?"

"Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme.
Jenkins going to sing."

There was a movement in the drawing-room, a more violent swaying of the
crowd near the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de
Gery breathed. What he had just heard had oppressed his heart. He felt
himself reached, soiled, by this mud flung in handfuls over the ideal
which in his own mind he had formed of that splendid adolescence,
matured by the sun of Art to so penetrating a charm. He moved away
a little, changed his place. He feared to hear again some whispered
infamy. Mme. Jenkins's voice did him good, a voice that was famous in
the drawing-rooms of Paris and that in spite of all its magnificence had
nothing theatrical about it, but seemed an emotional utterance vibrating
over unstudied sonorities. The singer, a woman of forty or forty-five,
had splendid ash-blond hair, delicate, rather nerveless features, a
striking expression of kindness. Still good-looking, she was dressed
in the costly taste of a woman who has not given up the thought of
pleasing. Indeed, she was far from having given it up. Married a dozen
years ago, for a second time, to the doctor, they seemed still to be
at the first months of their dual happiness. While she sang a popular
Russian melody, savage and sweet like the smile of a Slav, Jenkins was
ingenuously proud, without seeking to dissimulate the fact, his broad
face all beaming; and she, each time that she bent her head as she
regained her breath, glanced in his direction a timid, affectionate
smile that flew to seek him over the unfolded music. And then, when she
had finished amid an admiring and delighted murmur, it was touching to
notice how discreetly she gave her husband's hand a secret squeeze, as
though to secure to themselves a corner of private bliss in the midst of
her great triumph. Young de Gery was feeling cheered by the spectacle of
this happy couple, when quite close to him a voice murmured--it was not,
however, the same voice that he had heard just before:

"You know what they say--that the Jenkinses are not married."

"How absurd!"

"I