shed nothing intellectually."

"Pardon me, sir," interrupted his hearer. But the other went on more
vehemently and more aggressively. He wished, he said, that all France
could hear what he thought. The nation was abased, crushed beyond all
hope of recuperation. As for himself, he had determined to emigrate to
America.

All this time the poet was vaguely conscious of the admiring gaze that
was bent upon him. He experienced something of the same sensation that
one has in the fields in the early evening, when the moon suddenly rises
behind you and compels you to turn toward its silent presence. The eyes
of this woman magnetized him in the same way. The words she caught in
regard to leaving France struck a chill to her heart. A funereal gloom
settled over the room. Additional dismay overwhelmed her as D'Argenton
wound up with a vigorous tirade against French women,--their lightness
and coquetry, the insincerity of their smiles, and the venality of their
love.

The poet no longer conversed; he declaimed, leaning against the chimney,
and careless who heard either his voice or his words.

Poor Ida, intensely absorbed as she was in him, could not realize that
he was indifferent, and fancied that his invectives were addressed to
herself.

"He knows who I am," she said, and bowed her head in shame.

Moronval said aloud, "What a genius!" and in a lower voice to himself,
"What a boaster!" But Ida needed nothing more; her heart was gone. Had
Dr. Hirsch, who was always so interested in pathological singularities,
been then at leisure, he might have made a curious study of this case of
instantaneous combustion.

An hour before, Madame Moronval had dispatched Jack to bed, with two
or three of the younger children; the others were gaping in silent
wretchedness, stupefied by all they saw and heard. The Chinese lanterns
swung in the wind each side of the garden-gate; the lane was unlighted,
and not even a policeman enlivened its muddy sidewalk; but the
disputative little group that left the Moronval Academy cared little
for the gloom, the cold, or the dampness.

When they reached the avenue they found that the hour for the omnibus
had passed. They accepted this as they did the other disagreeables of
life--in the same brave spirit.

Art is a great magician. It creates a sunshine from which its devotees,
as well as the poor and the ugly, the sick and the sorry, can each
borrow a little, and with it gain a grace to suffer, and a c