The room rang with her wild, triumphant cry of joy! She flung her frail arms wide, and repeated: “The sign! The sign!” then, “Yes, my dearies, mother’s coming! We will fall down and worship, and then we will all go on together!” Her arms dropped suddenly--her black eyes closed--and she fell sidewise into my arms; and even in the very moment of placing her upon her pillow I cast one glance through the uncovered window and saw but the sullen sky bending low over the still more sullen lake. She never opened her eyes again, and as she lay there so still, so white, I could not but notice how gentle her face had grown, and bending down for the first and last time, I kissed her tenderly. A slow smile came about her lips, and she spoke for the last time, when she said softly, happily: “The sign! _It is_ the sign!” A moment later there was a long sigh, broken by a shiver, and then stillness, perfect stillness, and I whispered: “They have all gone on together!” “In Paris Suddenly----” “In Paris Suddenly----” I saw it in the _Herald_ this morning: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de B----.” Nothing remarkable about that announcement. Nothing to affect the general reader, but to me the letters were luminous. “In Paris suddenly, Madame Miriam de B----.” The creep is in my blood yet, for you see, I met Madame Miriam de B---- once, and if I were to live in this world even unto a hundred years, I should not forget that brief meeting. The house was crowded; we were yet in the first act of the running play, one night, when a companion, a young society woman (who was trying to unlearn in a theatre all she had been taught as an amateur) edged close to me and whispered: “Look at the woman in the box; is she not beautiful?” I looked and answered quickly: “She is handsome, not beautiful.” “I can’t see any difference between the meaning of the words,” she pouted, “but look well at her, I have something to tell you when----.” Here the action of the play parted us, but brought me close to the box. I had needed no urging to look well at its occupant. I could scarcely take my eyes from her, there was something so strange, so odd about her. She was not young. She was most stately in air and figure. Her head was most beautifully shaped, her features regular, her chin firm and deeply cleft, and her eyes--not black, not brown--yet dark, radiantly dark. Their soft shining seeming to contradict the cold strength of her face. Her brows--ah, at last, here was the bizarre touch! Her eyebrows formed one straight line. I don’t mean that they nearly met or were thinly joined; they were thickly and darkly united, in one threatening sweep, above her glowing eyes, giving that hint of tragedy to her face that so surely accompanies united brows on either man or woman.