d Mademoiselle, earnestly, "who _did_ you ever see of
whom you _could_ not speak lightly?"

"One person in the world--my mother. Sometimes in my dreams of the 'auld
lang syne' I almost see that dear little lady; she had a window just
like that, with the foliage rustling over it just as this does. Never,
mademoiselle, does that little morning-wrapper come up before my eyes
without making me a better and a purer man."

Both were silent for some minutes after this. Mademoiselle Milan sat
leaning her face against the crimson lining of her chair, apparently
lost in thought.

At length she said, "Would to God that all men understood women as well
as you!"

"But _your_ mother; where is she, mademoiselle?"

The lady's face turned as pale as marble, and her little white hands
grasped the arms of her chair, until they seemed almost imbedded in the
ebony. She attempted an utterance, but her voice failed her, and there
was a dead silence.

Reed was a man of feeling. He did not talk, nor persuade her to talk. He
did not even sit doing nothing. He went out on the balcony to examine
the flowers. He climbed noiselessly up the lattice-work for jasmines
fluttering in the evening breeze. Finally, he took up a violin and
played.

He always played well, but now the music was low and soft,--old Scotch
ballads, wild and mournful, touching little German songs, plaintive
romances full of subdued passion. Mademoiselle Milan did not notice him;
but in her heart she felt grateful for his consideration. Gradually the
color returned to her face, and, soothed by the sad, sweet strains, she
sunk into dreamy reverie.

"When we have reached another sphere, where emotion governs instead of
thought, I think that man will speak in splendid music."

Reed looked at her earnestly for a moment, and then said, "Mademoiselle,
why did you never write?"

"The public treats authors very much as drill-sergeants do
recruits,--drunk the first day, and beaten the rest of their lives."

"Great minds _rule_ the public."

"And yet I fear your courage would ooze away when you came to lay a
lance at rest against such a windmill as the common sense of the
nineteenth century, whirling its rotary sails under the steady breeze
of ridicule. I am a woman, and know a woman's place. I have had dreams
in my time,--'dreams like that flower that blooms in a single night, and
dies at dawn;' but they are passed. You see, I carry the glare of the
foot-lights even here." A