the room
with a courteous bow of dismissal from Marie.

I have walked that way very often. Once or twice I have seen Marie at
the window, when she has not seen me. But I have not attempted to
visit her again. Of what use is it for me, then, to have such a
knowledge of her, when she does not have a similar one sympathetic
with me? She has not sung in public of late, and I do not know the
reason why she has not.

My friends are fond of asking me why I, every night, sit in a
different place at the theatre; and why I have such a fancy for a seat
in the midst of the trumpets of the orchestra, and directly under the
leader. I am striving to make new acoustic discoveries.

But I dare not state in what theatre it is that my point of
observation can be found, nor ask of the management to make an
alteration in the position of the orchestra, lest some night I should
be observed, and expose all the secrets of my breast to a less
confidential observer.

A STORY OF THE LATIN QUARTER.

BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

_Scribner's Monthly, May, 1879._

"He is one of the Americans," his fellow _locataires_ said among
themselves. "Poor and alone and in bad health. A queer fellow."

Having made this reply to those who questioned them, they were in the
habit of dismissing the subject lightly. After all, it was nothing to
them, since he had never joined their circle.

They were a gay, good-natured lot, and made a point of regarding life
as airily as possible, and taking each day as it came with fantastic
good cheer. The house--which stood in one of the shabbiest corners of
the Latin Quarter--was full of them from floor to garret--artists,
students, models, French, English, Americans, living all of them
merrily, by no means the most regular of lives. But there were good
friends among them; their world was their own, and they found plenty
of sympathy in their loves and quarrels, their luck and ill-luck.
Upon the whole there was more ill-luck than luck. Lucky men did not
choose for their head-quarters such places as this rather dilapidated
building,--they could afford to go elsewhere, to places where the
Quarter was better, where the stairs were less rickety, the passages
less dark, and the _concierge_ not given to chronic intoxication. Here
came the unlucky ones, whose ill-luck was of various orders and
degrees: the young ones who were some day to paint pictures which
would be seen in the Palais de l'Industrie and would be gr