d the chamber.

"This is better. Light when one has the headache is hurtful." She
went to the bed. "You cannot sleep in these tight boots, try as
you like, and without some hours of sleep the neuralgia will not
leave you."

Before these words were finished, her slender hands had changed
the tight boots for roomy and soft ones. She bent down, and with
a touch of her fingers unfastened a number of hooks at her
mother's breast.

"Now, it will be well!" Irene dropped her arms on her dress and
smiled a little. Despite her fashionable robe and fantastic
hairdressing there was in her at that moment something of the
sister of charity, she seemed painstaking and cautious.

"And now, mamma, be a little glutton," added she with a smile;
"you will drink the bouillon and eat the rusk; I will go to paint
my chrysanthemums."

She was at the door when she heard the call:

"Ira!"

"What, mamma?"

Two arms stretched toward her, and surrounded her neck; and lips,
so feverish that they burnt, covered her forehead and face with
kisses. Irene in return pressed her lips to her mother's forehead
and hand, but for a few seconds only, then she withdrew from the
embrace with a gentle movement, moved away somewhat, and said:

"Be not excited, for that may increase the neuralgia."

At the door she turned again:

"Should anything be needed, just whisper; you know what delicate
hearing I have; I shall hear. I shall be painting in your study.
Those chrysanthemums are beautiful, and I have a new idea about
them which interests me greatly."

In the tempered winter light from the window, in that study full
of gilding, artistic trifles, syringas, and hyacinths, Irene sat
at the table with painting utensils, sunk in thought and idle.
From beneath her brows, which had each the outline of a delicate
little flame, her fixed eyes turned toward the past. She had in
mind a time when she was ten years old, and was fitting a new
dress on her doll with immense interest. At first she did not
turn attention to her parents' conversation in the next chamber,
but afterward, when the dress was fitted to the doll as if melted
around it, she raised her head, and through the open door began
to look and listen. Her father, with a jesting smile, was sitting
in an armchair; her mother, in a white gown, was standing before
him, with such an expression in her eyes as if she were praying
for salvation.

"Aloysius!" said she, "have we not enough? Is there nothi