What will happen to her when he dies? Will she return to Boston? Shall I ever see her again? Last year I vowed that I would not, and I think it would please her as well if I stayed away.... And she is right, for so long as I am not by her she is with me. But in the same room, amid the familiar furniture, we are divided by the insuperable past, and to retain her I must send her away. The idea is an amusing one; I think I have read it somewhere, it seems to me like something I have read. Did I ever read of a man who sent his mistress away so that his possession might be more complete? Whether I did or didn't matters little, the idea is true to me to-day--in order to possess her I must never see her again. A pretty adventure it would be, nevertheless, to spend a week paying visits to those whom I loved about that time; and I can imagine a sort of Beau Brummel of the emotions going every year to Paris to spend a day with each of his mistresses. There were others about that time. There was Madame ----. The name is in itself beautiful, characteristically French, and it takes me back to the middle centuries, to the middle of France. I always imagined that tall woman, who thought so quickly and spoke so sincerely, dealing out her soul rapidly, as one might cards, must have been born near Tours. She was so French that she must have come from the very heart of France; she was French as the wine of France; as Balzac, who also came from Tours; and her voice, and her thoughts, and her words transported one; by her side one was really in France; and, as her lover, one lived through every circumstance of a French love story. She lived in what is called in Paris an hotel; it had its own _concierge_, and it was nice to hear the man say, "Oui, monsieur, Madame la Marquise est chez elle," to walk across a courtyard and wait in a boudoir stretched with blue silk, to sit under a Louis XVI. rock crystal chandelier. She said one day, "I'm afraid you're thinking of me a great deal," and she leaned her hands on the back of the chair, making it easy for me to take them. She said her hands had not done any kitchen work for five hundred years, and at the time that seemed a very witty thing to say. The drawing-room opened onto a conservatory twenty feet high; it nearly filled the garden, and the marquise used to receive her visitors there. I do not remember who was the marquise's lover when the last fête was given, nor what play was acted; only that the ordinary guests lingered over their light refreshments, scenting the supper, and that to get rid of them we had to bid the marquise ostentatiously goodnight. Creeping round by the back of the house, we gained the bedrooms by the servants' staircase, and hid there until the ordinary guests in decency could delay no longer. As soon as the last one was gone the stage was removed, and the supper tables were laid out. Shall I ever forget the moment when the glass roof of the conservatory began to turn blue, and the