If this history of Ralph Flare that we are writing was not a fiction, we might make Suzette give way at once under the burden of her grief, and rest upon a chair, and weep. On the contrary, she did just the opposite. She laughed.

Human nature is consistent only in its inconsistencies. She meant to break down in the end, but wished to intimidate him by a show of carelessness, so she first said quietly: "Monsieur Ralph, I have come to see to my washing; it went out with yours; will you tell the proprietor to send it to me?"

"Yes, madame."

"May I sit down, sir? It is a good way up-stairs, and I want to breathe a minute."

"As you like, madame."

He was resting on the sofa; she took a chair just opposite. There was a table between them, and for a little while she looked with a ghastly playfulness into his eyes, he regarding her coldly and darkly; and then, she laughed. It was a terrible laugh to come from a child's lips. It was a woman's pride, drowning at the bottom of her heart, and in its last struggle for preservation sending up these bubbles of sound.

We talk of tragic scenes in common life; this was one of them. The little room with its waxed, inlaid floor, the light falling bloodily in at the crimson curtains and throwing unreal shadows upon the spent fire, the disordered furniture, the unmade bed; and there were the two actors, suffering in their little sphere what only seems more suffering in prisons and upon scaffolds, and playing with each other's agonies as not more refined cruelty plays with racks and tortures.

"You are pleased, madame," said Ralph.

"No, I am wondering what has changed you. There are black circles around your eyes; you have not shaved; the bones of your cheeks are sharp like your chin, and you are yellow and bent like a dry leaf."

"I have had an excess of money lately. Being free to do as I like, I have done so."

She looked furtively around the room. "Somebody has gone away from here this morning—is it true?"

He laughed suggestively.

"I saw you with two girls last night; the company did you honor; it was one of them, perhaps."

"You guess shrewdly," he replied.

"This is her room now; it may be she will object to see me here."

"You are right," said Ralph Flare, with mock courtesy, rising up. "When you lived with me I permitted no one to visit me in your absence. My late friends will be vexed. You have finished the business which brought you here, and I must go to breakfast now."

Ralph was a good actor. Had he thought Suzette really meant to go, he would have fallen on his knees.

"Stop, Ralph, my boy," she cried. "I know that you do not love me; I can't see why I ever believed that you did. But let me sit with you a little while. You drove me from you once. I know that you have found one to fill my place; but, enfant, I love you. I want to take your head in my arms as I have done a hundred times, and hear you say one kind word before we part forever."

"There was a time," he said slowly, "when you did not need my embraces. I was eager to give them. I did not give you kindness only; I gave you nourishment, shelter, clothing, money. You were unworthy and ungrateful. You are nothing to me now. Do not think to wheedle me back to be your fool again."

"Oh! for charity, my child, not for love—I am too wretched to hope that—for pity, let me sit by your side five minutes. I cannot put it into words why I beg it, but it is a little thing to grant. If one starved you, or had stolen from you, and asked it so earnestly, you would consent. I only want you to think less bitterly of me. You must needs have some hard thoughts. I have done wrong, my boy, but you do not know all the cause, and as what I mean to say cannot make place in your breast for me now, you will know that it is true, because it has no design. Oh! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! It is so hard to have but one deep love, and yet find that love the greatest sorrow of one's life. It is so hard to have loved my boy so well, and to know that to the end of his days he hated me."

She said this with all the impetuosity of her race; with utter abandonment of plan or effort, yet with a wild power of love and gesture which we know only upon the stage, but which in France is life, feeling, reality.

She sat down and sobbed, raising her voice till it rolled with a shrill music which made him quiver, through the parted curtain and into the turbulent street. There were troops passing beneath the balcony, and the clangor of drums and bugles climbed between the stone walls, as if to pour all its mockery into the little room.

Ralph Flare hated to see a woman cry; it pained him more than her; so he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the sofa and placed her head upon his breast. For a long while she sat in that strange luxury of grief, and she was fearful that he would send her away before her agitation could pass, and she might speak. His face wore an incredulous sneer as she spoke, though he knew it was absolute truth. She told him how wretched she had been, so wretched that even temptation respected her; how she had never known the intensity of her passion for him till they were asunder; how all previous attachments were as ice to fire compared to this; and how the consciousness of its termination should make her desolate forever.

"I looked upon you," she said, "as one whom I had trained up. Since I have lost my little Jules I have needed something to care for. I taught you to speak my language as if you were a baby. You learned the coinage of the land, and how to walk through the city, and all customs and places, precisely as a child learns them from his mother. Alas! you were wiser than I, and it made me sad to feel it. It was like the mother's regret that her boy is getting above her, in mind, in stature, so that he shall be able to do without her. Yet with that fear there is a pride like mine, when I felt that you were clever. Ah! Ralph, you loved to make me feel how weak and mean I was. You played with my poor heart, sick enough before, and little by little I felt your love gliding away from me, till at last you told me that it was gone. You said you should leave France, never to return—God forgive you if it was not true!—and when you treated me worst, I was tempted to hear kind words from another. Fanchette's friend has a rich cousin who admires me. He is to live in Paris many years. I never loved him, but I am poor, and many women marry only for a home. He offered that and more to me. I would not hear it. Oh! if you had only said one tender word to me in those days of temptation. I begged you for it. When I was humblest at your feet you put your heel upon me most.

"One night when I had the greatest trouble of all he sat beside me and plied his suit, and was pleasanter, my boy, than you have ever been; and then, rising, he placed that box of jewelry in my lap and ran away. I left it upon Fanchette's mantel that night. She filled my head with false thoughts next day. I never meant while you were in Paris to do you any wrong; but I put those jewels in my pocket, meaning to give them up again; you found them, and I was made wretched."

Ralph made that dry, biting cough which he used to express unbelief. She only bent her head and wept silently.

"When all was gone, poor me! I have found much sorrow in my little life, but we are light-hearted in France, and we live and laugh again. Perhaps you have made me more like one of your countrywomen. I do not know—only that I can never be happy any more.

"Since we have dwelt apart my tempter has been to see me every day. He has grand chambers which he will give me, and rich wardrobes, and a watch, and a voiture. It is a dazzling picture for one who toils, going all her days on foot, and lovely only to be deceived. But I hate that man now, because he has come between you and me, and I have slept upon my tears alone."

She melted again into a long, loud wail, and he proposed nervously that they should walk into the gardens near by. He said little, and that contemptuously, tossing his cane at the birds, much interested in a statue, delighted with the visitors beneath the maroon trees; and she followed him here and there, very weak, for she had eaten no breakfast, and not so deceived but she knew that he labored to wound her. He asked her into a cafÉ, cavalierly, and was very careful to make display of his napoleons as he paid. He did not invite her, but she followed him to his hotel again, and here, as if with terrible ennui, he threw himself upon his bed and feigned to sleep, while she crouched at his table and wrote him a contrite letter. It was sweetly and simply worded, and asked that he should let her return to him for his few remaining days in Paris. If he could not grant so much, might she speak to him in the street; come to see him sometimes, if only to be reviled; love him, though she could not hope to be loved? She gave him this note with her face turned away, and faltered the request that he would think ere he replied, and hurried to the balcony without, that she might not trouble him with the presence of her sorrow.

How the street beneath her, into which she looked, had changed since the nights when they talked together upon this balcony! There was bright sunshine, but it fell leeringly, not laughingly, upon the columns of the Odean Theatre, upon the crowds on the Boulevard, upon the decrepit baths of Julian, upon the far heights of Belleville, upon her more cheerlessly than upon all.

She listened timorously for his word of recall. She wondered if he were not writing a reply. Yes, that was his manner; he was cold and sharp of speech, but he was an artist with his pen. She thought that her long patience had moved him. Perhaps she should be all forgiven. Aye! they should dwell together a few days longer. It was a dismal thought that it must be for a few days, yet that would be some respite, and then they could part friends; though her heart so clung to his that a parting should rend it from her, she wanted to live over their brief happiness again.

"Oh!" said Suzette, in the end, laying her cheek upon the cold iron of the balcony, "I wish I had died at my father's home of pining for something to love rather than to have loved thus truly, and have it accounted my shame. If I were married to this man I could not be his fonder wife; but because I am not he despises me. All day I have crawled in the dust; I have made myself cheap in his eyes. If I were prouder he might not love me more, but his respect would be something."

She rallied and took heart. Pride is the immortal part of woman. With a brighter eye she entered the room. Her letter, blotted with tears, lay crumpled and torn upon the floor at his bedside, and he, with his face to the wall, was snoring sonorously.

"Ralph Flare," cried Suzette, "arise! that letter is the last olive branch you shall ever see in my hand; adieu!"

He opened his eyes yawningly. Suzette, with trembling lips and nostrils, clasped the door-knob. It shut behind her with a shock. Her feet were quick upon the stairs; he pursued her like one suddenly gone mad, and called her back with something between a moan and a howl.

"Do not go away, Suzette," he cried; "I only jested. I meant this morning to search you out and beg you to come back. I would not lose you for France—for the world. Be not rash or retaliatory! become not the companion of this Frenchman who has divided us. We will commence again. I have tested your fidelity. You shall have all the liberty that you need, everything that I have; say to me, sweetheart, that you will stay!"

For a moment her bright eyes were scintillant with wrath and indignation. He who had racked her all day for his pleasure was bound and prostrate now. Should she not do as much for her revenge?

"I have no other friend now," he pleaded; "my nights have been sleepless, solitary. In the days I have drunk deeply, squandered my money, tried all dissipations, and proved them disappointments. If you leave me I swear that I will plague myself and you."

"Oh! Ralph," said Suzette, "I do not wonder at the artfulness of women after this day's lesson. Something impels me to return your cruelty; it is a bad impulse, and I shall disobey it. I thank God, my baby, that I cannot do as you have done to me."

She wept again for the last time, but he kissed her tears away, and wondered where the great shame lay, upon that child or upon him?