Horse-dealer! Louise might be at death's door, but M. Auguste had his position to maintain. Then, after ten long days, came a post-card, also from Paris: Louise was in Marseilles, he was on the point of going, once there he would write. Then--nothing. Had he gone? Could he go? If I were writing a romance it would, with dramatic fitness, end here. But if I keep to facts, I must add that, in about eight months, Louise and M. Auguste reappeared; that both were in the best of health and spirits, M. Auguste a mass of jewelry; that all the sunshine of Provence seemed let loose in the warmth of their greeting; that horse-dealing for the moment prospered too splendidly for Louise to want to return to us,--or was this a new invention, I have always wondered, because she found in her place another Frenchwoman who wept at the prospect of being dismissed to make room for her? Well, anyway, for a while, things, according to Louise, continued to prosper. She would pay me friendly visits and ask for sewing,--her afternoons were so long,--and tell me of M. Auguste's success, and of Provence, though there were the old reticences. By degrees, a shadow fell over the gaiety. I fancied that "the comedy" was being played faster than ever in the Soho lodgings. And, of a sudden, the fabric of prosperity collapsed like a house of cards. She was ill again, and again an operation was necessary. There was not a penny in her pockets nor in M. Auguste's. What happened? Louise had only to smile, and we were her slaves. But this time, for us at least, the end had really come. We heard nothing more from either of them. No letters reached us from Paris, no post-cards. Did she use the money to go back to Marseilles? Did she ever leave London? Did M. Auguste's fate overtake him when they crossed the Channel? Were the Soho lodgings the scene of some tremendous _crime passionel_? For weeks I searched the police reports in my morning paper. But neither then nor to this day have I had a trace of the woman who, for over a year, gave to life in our chambers the comfort and the charm of her presence. She vanished. I am certain, though, that wherever she may be, she is mothering M. Auguste, squandering upon him all the wealth of her industry, her gaiety, her unselfishness. She couldn't help herself, she was made that way. And the worst, the real tragedy of it, is that she would rather endure every possible wrong with M. Auguste than, without him, enjoy all the rights women not made that way would give her if they could. She has convinced me of the truth I already more than suspected: it is upon the M. Augustes of this world that the Woman Question will eventually be wrecked. _Our Charwomen_ [Illustration: "UP TO WESTMINSTER"] IV OUR CHARWOMAN