YVETTE SAMORIS

"The Comtesse Samoris."

"That lady in black over there?"

"The very one. She's wearing mourning for her daughter, whom she killed."

"You don't mean that seriously? How did she die?"

"Oh! it is a very simple story, without any crime in it, any violence."

"Then what really happened?"

"Almost nothing. Many courtesans are born to be virtuous women, they say;
and many women called virtuous are born to be courtesans--is that
not so? Now, Madame Samoris, who was born a courtesan, had a daughter
born a virtuous woman, that's all."

"I don't quite understand you."

"I'll--explain what I mean. The comtesse is nothing but a common,
ordinary parvenue originating no one knows where. A Hungarian or
Wallachian countess or I know not what. She appeared one winter in
apartments she had taken in the Champs Elysees, that quarter for
adventurers and adventuresses, and opened her drawing-room to the first
comer or to any one that turned up.

"I went there. Why? you will say. I really can't tell you. I went there,
as every one goes to such places because the women are facile and the men