"Then I shall have to go on with my dive till she comes?" "I suppose so," Jules replied coldly. She saw that he did not wish to continue the conversation; so she went into the nursery, leaving him lying on the couch, where he often took an afternoon nap; since coming to London he had grown very lazy, and had gained flesh. Blanche found Jeanne wide awake and crowing in Madeleine's arms. She sat beside the cradle, and taking the child in her lap, sent Madeleine out of the room. Jeanne snatched at the brooch she wore at her throat, and laughed into her face. Blanche tried to smile in reply, but the tears welled into her eyes again, and fell in big drops on her cheeks. XVII Three days after Jules' talk with Marshall, the forthcoming engagement at the Hippodrome of Miss Lottie King was announced in the London newspapers. Blanche signed a new contract, by which she agreed to perform for several weeks longer on the trapeze and on the rope at half the salary she had been receiving. Marshall said that no mention of the plunge would be made in the papers; her name would continue to "draw," and the public would be satisfied with Miss King's great dive into the tank. This remark made Jules very angry, and it also depressed Blanche, who felt as if she had already been deposed from her supremacy as the chief attraction at the Hippodrome. Indeed, as the time drew near when she was to cease making the plunge, instead of feeling happier, she grew more despondent; she had already elaborated her performance on the trapeze by introducing several new feats that she and Jules had planned together, but with these she was not satisfied; she felt like an actor obliged to play small parts after winning success in leading characters. As for Jules, he did not try to hide his discontent at the change in his wife's work. In the first place, it made his brief but dramatic public appearance unnecessary; in future he would be obliged to conduct Blanche to the circus, and live again like any mere hanger-on to the skirts of a public performer. The _rôle_ was ignoble, unworthy of him. Then, too, he chafed at the thought of his wife's decline in importance at the Hippodrome; he fancied that when her inability to go on with the plunge had become known to the other performers they would lose respect for her and for himself. He secretly doubted if the public would accept Blanche merely for her performance on the trapeze and on the rope. Almost any one could do that; but in the plunge she was without a rival. He hoped that, as a compensation for his vexation, the performance of Miss King would be a failure. Forty feet! What did that amount to in comparison with the magnificent plunge of more than ninety feet that Blanche had made at Vienna?