ng herself over the side of the chair with her head
resting on her arms, not sobbing aloud, but her whole frame shaken by
the strength of her emotion. I rushed for a glass of wine; I pressed
her to take it. I did not quite know what to do, but, putting myself in
her place, I decided to praise the drama; and praise it I did. I do not
know when I have used so many adjectives. She raised her head and began
to wipe her eyes.

"Do take the wine," I said, interrupting myself in my cataract of
language.

"I dare not," she answered; then added humbly, "that is, unless you
have a biscuit here or a bit of bread."

I found some biscuit; she ate two, and then slowly drank the wine,
while I resumed my verbal Niagara. Under its influence--and that of the
wine too, perhaps--she began to show new life. It was not that she
looked radiant--she could not--but simply that she looked warm. I now
perceived what had been the principal discomfort of her appearance
heretofore: it was that she had looked all the time as if suffering
from cold.

At last I could think of nothing more to say, and stopped. I really
admired the drama, but I thought I had exerted myself sufficiently as
an anti-hysteric, and that adjectives enough, for the present at least,
had been administered. She had put down her empty wine-glass, and was
resting her hands on the broad cushioned arms of her chair with, for a
thin person, a sort of expanded content.

"You must pardon my tears," she said, smiling; "it was the revulsion of
feeling. My life was at a low ebb: if your sentence had been against me
it would have been my end."

"Your end?"

"Yes, the end of my life; I should have destroyed myself."

"Then you would have been a weak as well as wicked woman," I said in a
tone of disgust. I do hate sensationalism.

"Oh no, you know nothing about it. I should have destroyed only this
poor worn tenement of clay. But I can well understand how _you_ would
look upon it. Regarding the desirableness of life the prince and the
beggar may have different opinions.--We will say no more of it, but
talk of the drama instead." As she spoke the word "drama" a triumphant
brightness came into her eyes.

I took the manuscript from a drawer and sat down beside her. "I suppose
you know that there are faults," I said, expecting ready acquiescence.

"I was not aware that there were any," was her gentle reply.

Here was a beginning! After all my interest in her--and, I may say
under