As she listened to this mysterious voice in her own heart, Julie looked about her and was surprised to find that a divine tranquillity succeeded to the agitation which had overwhelmed her. She thoroughly relished the charm of a very simple little phenomenon. Short-sighted though she was, she was able to see everything in a room so much smaller than those to which she was accustomed. A very humble dwelling was that Louis XIII. pavilion; but it was embellished by a tastefulness of arrangement which revealed the artist whose love of refinement was not lessened by poverty. The building was not ugly in itself. The deep, broad window-recess where the widow had installed her arm-chair as in a little sanctum, with her spinning-wheel, her little table and the cushion for her feet, imparted a sort of homelike Flemish aspect to that part of the studio; the rest had been recently restored, but with the strictest economy. Plain gray wainscoting with raised borders to the panels; straight lines everywhere, but nothing out of proportion; a white ceiling, rather low, but devoid of any crushing effect; above the doors, oval spaces with very simple garlands of foliage carved on wood and painted, as was the beading of the panels, a deeper shade of gray than the rest; two or three beautiful fruit and flower pieces, highly prized specimens of André Thierry's work, with several sketches and one or two small studies by Julien; a large bowl of Rouen porcelain, standing on a console in front of a mirror, and filled with wild flowers and green branches gracefully arranged and hanging to the floor; a small rug before the couch, two or three easels, shells, boxes of insects, statuettes and engravings on a large table; cane-seated oak chairs, and a small harp, whose old gilded frame glistened in a dark corner, the only brilliant object in the whole room: surely there was nothing in all this to denote great affluence; but over it all there was a varnish of exquisite neatness, an atmosphere of freshness and a soft light most conducive to revery. The studio was darkened a little by the lilacs in the garden, which were too near and too dense; but there was a strange fascination in that greenish light, and there was in the air an indefinable invitation to rapt contemplation, which Julie felt most profoundly. What more did one need than that humble and unpretentious retreat to taste the pure joy and unending bliss of moral security? Of what benefit was it to Julie to have magnificent furniture, a thousand trinkets on her what-nots at which she never looked, blue ceilings starred with gold over her head, Gobelin carpets under her feet, Sèvres vases to hold her bouquets, lackeys in gold lace to announce her friends, her pockets full of Chinese fans, and her jewel-cases of diamonds? All those things had amused her but a single day, and what playthings can divert a heart that is bored? Julien's austere and laborious life, his pathetic, never-ending tête-à-tête with his