ns in the delicately rounded arm, the taper
fingers, and shapely feet were justified by the proportionate
development of the rest of her anatomy. Nature had been gentle rather
than generous. Mlle. Fouchette was in demand for angels and ballet
dancers.

Her face, evidently, did not suit Mlle. Fouchette, since she was at
this moment in the act of touching it up and making it over with
colors from an enamelled box,--a trick of the Parisienne of every
grade.

Mlle. Fouchette had scarcely put the finishing touches to her artistic
job when her door vibrated under a vigorous blow.

She paused, hesitated, flushed with symptoms of a rising temper. One
does not feel kindly towards persons hurling themselves thus against
one's private door. But the noise continued, as if somebody beat the
heavy planking with the fist, and Mlle. Fouchette threw the door open.

Mlle. Madeleine staggered into the room.

"How's this? melon!"

"Oh! so you're here,--you are not there!" gasped the intruder, falling
into a seat and fixing her black eyes sullenly upon the other.

Mlle. Fouchette closed the door with a snap and confronted her visitor
with a hardening face.

"I thought it was you, Fouchette!"

"Madeleine, you're drunk!"

"No, no, no, no! I have had such a--a--turn, deary,--pardon me! But
she had the same figure,--the same hair,--mon Dieu!"

"Who?"

"Oh! I don't know, Fouchette,--the woman with him, you know,--with
Henri, Fouchette!"

The speaker seemed overcome with mingled terror and anger. She stopped
to collect her thoughts,--to get her breath.

"What a fool you are, Madeleine! I wouldn't go on that way for the
best man living! No!"

And Fouchette thought of Jean Marot, and mentally included him.

"Oh! Fouchette, dear, you do not know! You cannot know! You never
loved! You cannot love! You are calm and cold and indifferent,--it is
your nature. Mine! I am consumed by fire,--it grips my very vitals!
Ah! Fouchette!"

"Bah! Madeleine, it is absinthe," said Fouchette, only half
pityingly.

"No, no, no, no!" moaned the other, covering her face with her hands.

"So this Lerouge has disappeared, eh? Well, then, let him go, fool!
Are there not others?"

"Mon Dieu! Fouchette, how you talk!"

"Who is this lucky woman?"

"I do not know,--I do not know! Pardon me for thinking it, Fouchette,
but I was half crazy,--I thought but just now that it was--was you!"

"Idiot!"

"Yes, I know; but one does not stop to reason whe