[Illustration: 0193] The room was as still as a chapel. Every one listened in profound absorption; even the stolid bull-necked waiter leaned against the wall, his gaze fastened upon her with respectful interest. She spoke slowly, in a low, sweet tone, the soft accompaniment of the piano following the rhythm of her voice with wonderful effectiveness. She seemed to forget her surroundings,--the hot, close room, crowded with shabby, eccentric geniuses who lived from hand to mouth, the poverty that evidently was her lot,--even her lover, who sat watching her with a cold, critical, half-disdainful air, making notes upon a slip of paper, now nodding his head approvingly, now frowning, when pleased or displeased with her performance. She was a rare picture as she thus stood and recited, a charming swing to her trim figure, half reclining upon the piano, her black hair falling loosely and caressing her forehead and casting her dark eyes in deeper shadow, and all her soul going forth in the low, soft, subdued passion of her verses. She reminded one greatly of Bernhardt, and might have been as great. During her whole rendering of this beautiful and pathetic tale of "other times" she scarcely moved, save for some slight gesture that suggested worlds. How well the lines suited her own history and condition only she could have told. Who was she? What had she been? Surely this strange woman, hardly more than a mere girl, capable of such feelings and of rendering them with so subtle force and beauty, had lived another life,- -no one knew, no one cared. Loud shouts of admiration and long applause rang through the room as she slowly and with infinite tenderness uttered the last line with bowed head and a choking voice. She stood for a moment while the room thundered, and then the noise seemed to recall her, to drag her back from some haunting memory to the squalor of her present condition, and then her eyes eagerly sought the gentleman of the fur-collared coat. It was an anxious glance that she cast upon him. He carelessly nodded once or twice, and she instantly became transfigured. The melancholy of her eyes and the wretched dejection of her pose disappeared, and her sad face lit up with a beaming, happy smile. She was starting to return to him, all the woman in her awaking to affection and a yearning for the refuge of his love, when the vociferous cries of the crowd for an encore, and the waving of her lover's hand as a signal for her to comply, sent her back on guard to the piano again. Her smile was very sweet and her voice full of trippling melody when she now recited a gay little ballad,--also her own composition,--"_Amours Joyeux_,"--in so entirely different a spirit that it was almost impossible to believe her the same mortal. Every fibre of her being participated in the rollicking abandon of the piece, and her eyes were flooded with the mellow radiance of supreme love satisfied and victorious.