ry of every romance she had ever read, created for herself an ideal
who resembled D'Argenton. The expression of her face so changed in
looking at him, her laughing eyes assumed so tender an expression, that
her passion soon ceased to be a mystery to any one.

Moron val, who looked on, shrugged his shoulders, with a glance at his
wife. "She is simply crazy," he said to himself.

She certainly was crazed in a degree; and, after dinner, she tormented
herself to find some way of returning to the good graces of D'Argenton,
and, as he approached her in his walk, she said,--

"If M. d'Argenton wished to be very amiable, he would recite to us that
beautiful poem which created such a sensation the other evening. I
have thought of it all the week. There is one verse that haunts me,
especially the final line:

'And I believe in love,
As I believe in a good God above.'"

"As I believe in God above," said the poet, making as horrible a grimace
as if his finger had been caught in a vice.

The countess, who had but a vague idea of prosody, understood simply
that she had again incurred the displeasure of D'Argenton. The fact
is that he had begun to affect her in a manner quite beyond her own
control, and which, in its unreasoning terror, was somewhat like the
timid worship offered by the Japanese to their hideous idols.

Under the influence of his presence she was more foolish by far than
nature had made her; her piquancy forsook her, and the versatility
that rendered her so charmingly absurd was quite gone. But D'Argenton
relented, and suspended his hygienic exercise for a moment.

"I shall be most happy to recite anything, madame, at your command; but
what?"

Here Moronval interposed. "Recite the 'Credo,' my dear fellow," he said.

"Very well, then; I am satisfied to obey you."

The poem commenced gently enough with the words,--

"Madame, your toilette is charming."

Then irony deepened to bitterness, bitterness to fury, and concluded in
these terrific words:

"Good Lord, deliver me from this woman so terrible,
Who drains from my heart its life-blood."

As if these extraordinary words had aroused in his memory most painful
recollections, D'Argenton relapsed into silence, and said not another
word the whole evening. Poor Ida was also thoughtful, haunted by vague
fears of the noble ladies who had so warped the gentle spirit of her
poet, so drained his heart that there was not a drop left for he