Jules never forgot that dinner. In the first place, he was awed by the magnificence of the Tates' house; it surpassed anything of the kind he had ever seen in France or in America; it had never occurred to him that the English could have such good taste. Then, too, in spite of the efforts of his hosts to make him comfortable, he felt awkward, ill at ease, out of place. As soon as he entered the drawing-room, Blanche was taken upstairs by Mrs. Tate, and Jules was left with the husband and with Dr. Broughton. A moment later the Doctor disappeared, and for the next half-hour Jules tried to maintain a conversation in English. Tate turned the conversation to life in Paris as compared with the life of London, but Jules had so much difficulty in speaking English that they fell at last into French. Meanwhile, Blanche sat in the library with Mrs. Tate and Dr. Broughton, whom she had not seen since the day of his call upon her. The Doctor had at once won her confidence, and since her talk with him she had felt better, and she fancied that the tonic he gave her had already benefited her. But she still had that pain in her back, she said, and that terrible fear; every night when she kissed the little Jeanne before going to the Hippodrome, she felt as if she should never see the child again. If she didn't stop feeling like that, she didn't know what would happen. "If you could give up the plunge for a while," the Doctor suggested, "you'd be very much better for the rest. Then you might go back to it, you know." "But I'm engaged for the season," Blanche replied in French, which the Doctor readily understood, but refused to speak. "I can't break my contract." "Perhaps you could make a compromise," Mrs. Tate suggested. "You could go on with your trapeze performance,--with everything except the dive." "I was really engaged for that," said Blanche, a look of dismay appearing in her face. "There are many others that perform on the trapeze." "But you might try to make some arrangement," Mrs. Tate insisted. "Your husband could talk it over with the managers." "Ah, but he would not like it," Blanche replied with evident distress. "It would make him so unhappy if he--if he knew." "If he knew you were being made ill by your work!" Mrs. Tate interrupted. "Of course it would make him unhappy, and it would be very strange if it didn't. But it's much better to have him know it than for you to go on risking your life every night." Dr. Broughton gave his hostess a glance that made her quail. A moment later, however, she gathered herself together.