she hoped for was to become a woman of Machiavellian finesse, and to have some money. If she had money and attained to real social wisdom, conventional society could go to the devil; for the adventuress, according to her, was welcome everywhere--that is, anywhere she would care to go. She did not expect to retain her beauty entirely; but she did expect to have some money, and meanwhile to live brilliantly as she deemed that she was now doing. Her love of amusement was quite as marked as ever, and her comments on the various women of her class as hard and accurate as they were brilliant. I remember her saying of one woman, with an easy sweep of her hand, “Like a willow, don’t you think?”--and of another, “She glows like a ruby.” It was true--fine character delineation. At Maxim’s, an hour later, she decided to go home, so we took her to her hotel and then resumed our pursuit of Mlle. Rillette. After much wandering we finally came upon her, about four in the morning, in one of those showy pleasure resorts that I have so frequently described. “Ah, yes, there she is,” Barfleur exclaimed. I looked to a distant table to see the figure he indicated--that of a young girl seemingly not more than twenty-four or twenty-five, a white silk neckerchief tied about her brown hair, her body clothed in a rather nondescript costume for a world so showy as this. Most of the women wore evening clothes. Rillette had on a skirt of light brown wool, a white shirtwaist open in the front and the collar turned down showing her pretty neck. Her skirt was short, and I noticed that she had pleasing ankles and pretty feet and her sleeves were short, showing a solid forearm. Before she noticed Barfleur we saw her take a slender girl in black for a partner and dance, with others, in the open space between the tables which circled the walls. I studied her with interest because of Barfleur’s description, because of the fact that she had been married twice, and because the physical and spiritual ruin of a dozen girls was, falsely or not, laid at her door. Her face did not suggest the depravity which her career would indicate, although it was by no means ruddy; but she seemed to scorn rouge. Her eyes--eyes are always significant in a forceful personage--were large and vague and brown, set beneath a wide, full forehead--very wonderful eyes. She appeared, in her idle security and profound nonchalance, like a figure out of the Revolution or the Commune. She would have been magnificent in a riot--marching up a Parisian street, her white band about her brown hair, carrying a knife, a gun, or a flag. She would have had the courage, too; for it was so plain that life had lost much of its charm and she nearly all of her caring. She came over when her dance was done, having seen Barfleur, and extended an indifferent hand. He told me, after their light conversation in French, that he had chided her to the effect that her career was ruining her once lovely voice. “I shall find it again at