have gone through
it all... tasted every kind of humiliation... endured every kind of
insult.... Remember! that I was not a noble aristocrat... a Duchess
or an impoverished Countess..." she added with marked bitterness, "or
perhaps the English cavaliers whom the popular voice has called the
League of the Scarlet Pimpernel would have taken some interest in me. I
was only a poor actress and had to find my way out of France alone, or
else perish on the guillotine."

"I am so sorry!" said Marguerite simply.

"Tell me how you got on, once you were in England," she continued after
a while, seeing that Desiree Candeille seemed absorbed in thought.

"I had a few engagements at first," replied the Frenchwoman. "I played
at Sadler's Wells and with Mrs. Jordan at Covent Garden, but the Aliens'
Bill put an end to my chances of livelihood. No manger cared to give me
a part, and so..."

"And so?"

"Oh! I had a few jewels and I sold them.... A little money and I live on
that.... But when I played at Covent Garden I contrived to send part of
my salary over to some of the poorer clubs of Paris. My heart aches for
those that are starving.... Poor wretches, they are misguided and misled
by self-seeking demagogues.... It hurts me to feel that I can do nothing
more to help them... and eases my self-respect if, by singing at public
fairs, I can still send a few francs to those who are poorer than
myself."

She had spoken with ever-increasing passion and vehemence. Marguerite,
with eyes fixed into vacancy, seeing neither the speaker nor her
surroundings, seeing only visions of those same poor wreckages of
humanity, who had been goaded into thirst for blood, when their shrunken
bodies should have been clamouring for healthy food,--Marguerite
thus absorbed, had totally forgotten her earlier prejudices and now
completely failed to note all that was unreal, stagy, theatrical, in the
oratorical declamations of the ex-actress from the Varietes.

Pre-eminently true and loyal herself in spite of the many deceptions and
treacheries which she had witnessed in her life, she never looked for
falsehood or for cant in others. Even now she only saw before her a
woman who had been wrongfully persecuted, who had suffered and had
forgiven those who had caused her to suffer. She bitterly accused
herself for her original mistrust of this noble-hearted, unselfish
woman, who was content to tramp around in an alien country, bartering
her talents for a few