She was looking out at the dreary lake again, and, without withdrawing her eyes, she made answer: “H’m’m! Clara, eh? Cla--ra, Claire--Clarice--that’s a fool name, Clarice? but Clara--that’s light, illustrious, clear, bright! My dear, I’m glad you are named Clara. It’s a good name. I hope it may fit you as well as mine has fitted me. My French mother meant to call me Marie, which is, you know, a form of Mary--‘Star of the Sea,’ and he who did the sprinkling and the crossing and the rest was deaf, and he named me Myra--‘she who weeps.’ Good God! Good God! Have I not been well named? ‘She who weeps.’ The tears are all gone from the eyes, now, and they are dry enough, but hot, my dearies--so very hot! Internal, cruel tears that ooze slowly, like drops of thin, old blood, still fall from my heart, my dearies, while I wait and wait. Aye, it was before the altar, and with the sign of the sacred cross, and the touch of the holy-water on my brow, that he baptized me ‘Myra’--‘she who weeps!’” I stole out of the room, where well-bred hunger showed its teeth so plainly, and softly closed the door, leaving her in the gathering darkness, a ghost talking to other ghosts, from whom she was separated by the thinnest, frailest shell of mortality I ever saw. And so we went our ways, and did the work that fell to us. Some nights I pranced cheerily about the stage in country dances, and made announcements anent that carriage that always seemed to be waiting for some one in the old plays, particularly the comedies. “My Lord, the carriage waits!” It is a famous line, a short one, I know, but powerful enough to produce temporary paralysis of the limbs and complete dumbness, for the moment, in strong and lusty youths and maidens. Well, I was on most friendly terms with that line, and some nights said nothing more, while on other nights I went on and played really first-class parts, that being the manner in which we used to work our way upward from the very bottom, and felt no shame in it either; but _nous avons changés tout cela_.