been paid her, which, being repeated to her, gave her greater pleasure
than anything she had ever heard. "A pretty woman?" some one had said.
"Why, her features are very bad." "I don't know about her features," a
very discerning observer had answered; "but she carries her head like a
pretty woman." You may imagine whether, after this, she carried her head
less becomingly.

She turned away from the window at last, pressing her hands to her eyes.
"It 's too horrible!" she exclaimed. "I shall go back--I shall go back!"
And she flung herself into a chair before the fire.

"Wait a little, dear child," said the young man softly, sketching away
at his little scraps of paper.

The lady put out her foot; it was very small, and there was an immense
rosette on her slipper. She fixed her eyes for a while on this ornament,
and then she looked at the glowing bed of anthracite coal in the grate.
"Did you ever see anything so hideous as that fire?" she demanded.
"Did you ever see anything so--so affreux as--as everything?" She spoke
English with perfect purity; but she brought out this French epithet
in a manner that indicated that she was accustomed to using French
epithets.

"I think the fire is very pretty," said the young man, glancing at it
a moment. "Those little blue tongues, dancing on top of the crimson
embers, are extremely picturesque. They are like a fire in an
alchemist's laboratory."

"You are too good-natured, my dear," his companion declared.