battered table, and a wretched bed in the corner. On the bed a
woman--the ghastly skeleton of a woman--lay dying.

The entrance of La Sylphine aroused the woman from the stupor into
which she had fallen. She opened her spectral eyes and looked eagerly
around.

"My Sunbeam! is it thou?"

"It is I, mother--at last. I could come no sooner. The ballet was
very long to-night."

"And my Sunbeam was bravoed, and encored, and crowned with flowers, was
she not?"

"Yes, mother; but never mind that. How are you tonight?"

"Dying, my own."

The _danseuse_ fell on her knees with a shrill, sharp cry.

"No, mother--no, no! Not dying! Very ill, very weak, very low, but
not dying. Oh, not dying!"

"Dying, my daughter!" the sick woman said. "I count my life by minutes
now; I heard the city clocks strike eleven; I counted the strokes, for,
my Sunbeam, it is the last hour thy mother will ever hear on earth."

The ballet-dancer covered her face, with a low, despairing cry. The
dying mother, with a painful effort, lifted her own skeleton hand and