said Felicia calmly. "You can offer him some at dinner."

"At dinner!"

The dancer was so thunderstruck that she nearly overturned her pretty cakes, which were as light and dainty and excellent as herself.

"Why, yes, I am keeping him to dinner with us. Oh! I beg you," she added with peculiar earnestness, seeing that the young man made a gesture of refusal, "I beg you, do not say no. You can do me a real service by staying to-night. Come, I did not hesitate a moment ago, you know."

She had taken his hand; really there seemed to be a strange disproportion between her request and the anxious, imploring tone in which it was made. Paul still held back. He was not properly dressed. How could she expect him to stay? A dinner-party at which she was to have other guests.

"My dinner-party? Why, I will countermand the orders for it. That is the way I feel. We three will dine alone, you and I and Constance."

"But, Felicia, my child, you can't think of doing such a thing. Upon my word! What about the—the other who will soon be here?"

"Parbleu! I will write to him to stay at home."

"Wretched girl, it is too late."

"Not at all, It's just striking six. The dinner was to be at half-past seven. You must send him this at once."

She wrote a note, in haste, on a corner of the table.

"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu! what a strange girl!" murmured the dancer, lost in bewilderment, while Felicia, enchanted, transfigured, joyously sealed her letter.

"There, my excuses are all made. The sick-headache wasn't invented for Kadour. Oh! how glad I am!" she added, when the letter had gone; "what a delightful evening we will have! Kiss me, Constance. This won't prevent our doing honor to your kuchlen, and we shall enjoy seeing you in a pretty gown that makes you look younger than I."

Less than that would have induced the dancer to forgive this latest whim of her dear demon and the crime of lèse-majesté in which she had made her an accomplice. The idea of treating such a personage so cavalierly! No one else in the world would have done it, no one but her. As for Paul de Géry, he made no further attempt at resistance, being caught once more in the network from which he believed that he had set himself free by absence, but which, as soon as he crossed the threshold of the studio, suppressed his will and delivered him over, fast bound and conquered, to the sentiment that he was firmly resolved to combat.

It was evident that the dinner, a veritable gourmand's dinner, superintended by the Austrian even in its least important details, had been prepared for a guest of first-rate consequence. From the high Berber chandeliers of carved wood, with seven branches, which shed a flood of light upon the richly embroidered cloth, to the long-necked wine-jugs of curious and exquisite shape, the sumptuous table appointments and the delicacy of the dishes, which were highly seasoned to an unusual degree, everything disclosed the importance of the expected guest and the pains that had been taken to please him. There was no mistaking the fact that it was an artist's establishment. Little silverware, but superb china, perfect harmony without the slightest attempt at arrangement. Old Rouen, pink Sèvres, Dutch glass mounted in old finely-wrought pewter met on that table as on a stand of rare objects collected by a connoisseur simply to gratify his taste. The result was some slight confusion in the household, dependent as it was upon the chance of a lucky find. The exquisite oil-cruet had no stopper. The broken salt-cellar overflowed on the cloth, and every moment it was: "What has become of the mustard-pot? What has happened to that fork?" All of which troubled de Géry a little on account of the young mistress of the house, who, for her part, was not in the least disturbed.

But something that made him even more ill at ease was his anxiety to know who the privileged guest was whose place he had taken at that table, whom they could entertain with such magnificence and at the same time such utter lack of ceremony. In spite of everything he felt as if that countermanded guest were present, a constant affront to his own dignity. In vain did he try to forget him; everything reminded him of him, even to the holiday attire of the kindly Fairy, who sat opposite him and who still retained some of the grand manners which she had assumed in anticipation of the solemn occasion. The thought disturbed him, poisoned his joy in being there.

On the other hand, as is always the case in parties of two, where harmony of mood is very rare, he had never seen Felicia so affectionate, in such merry humor. She was in a state of effervescent, almost childlike gayety, one of those fervent outbursts of emotion which one experiences when some danger has passed, the reaction of a clear, blazing fire after the excitement of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily, teased Paul about his accent and what she called his bourgeois ideas. "For you are shockingly bourgeois, you know. But that is just what I like in you. It's on account of the contrast, I have no doubt, because I was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always been fond of sedate, logical natures."

"Oh! my dear, what do you suppose Monsieur Paul will think, when you say you were born under a bridge?" exclaimed the excellent Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of metaphors, and always took everything literally.

"Let him think what he pleases, my Fairy. We haven't our eye on him for a husband. I am sure he would have none of that monster known as an artist wife. He would think he had married the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One must give oneself to it unreservedly. You put into your work all the imagination, energy, honesty, conscience that you possess, so that you have no more of any of them as long as you live, and the completion of the work tosses you adrift, helpless and without a compass, like a dismasted hulk, at the mercy of every wave. Such a wife would be a melancholy acquisition."

"And yet," the young man ventured timidly to observe, "it seems to me that art, however exacting it may be, cannot take entire possession of the woman. What would she do with her affections, with the craving for love, for self-sacrifice, which is in her, far more than in man, the motive for every act?"

She mused a moment before replying.

"You may be right, O wise Minerva! It is the truth that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of holes in it, unfathomable depths. Everything disappears that I throw in to fill them up. My noblest artistic enthusiasms are swallowed up in them and die every time in a sigh. At such times I think of marriage. A husband, children, a lot of children, tumbling about the studio, all their nests to look after, the satisfaction of the physical activity which is lacking in our artistic lives, regular occupations, constant movement, innocent fun, which would compel one to play instead of always thinking in the dark and the great void, to laugh at a blow to one's self-esteem, to be simply a happy mother on the day when the public casts one aside as a used-up, played-out artist."

And in presence of that vision of domestic happiness the girl's lovely features assumed an expression which Paul had never before seen upon them, and which took entire possession of him, gave him a mad longing to carry away in his arms that beautiful wild bird dreaming of the dovecot, to protect her, to shelter her with the sure love of an honest man.

She continued, without looking at him:

"I am not so flighty as I seem to be, you know. Ask my dear godmother if I didn't keep straight up to the mark