incense is perfumed with patchouli, and where the porch after high mass on Sundays resembles the corridor of the Opera House when a great artiste has been singing. She went to hear all the preachers that people were supposed to hear. She confessed her sins, not in the confessional, but in a community. The name and the individuality of the priest played an important part so far as she was concerned in the sacraments of the Church: she would not have felt that she was really married if any one but the Abbe Blampoix had officiated at her wedding, and she would not have considered a baptism valid if a ten-pound note had not been sent to the cure inside the traditional box of sugar-plums. This woman, whose mind was always fixed on worldly things, even when at church and during the benediction, was naturally, thoroughly, and absolutely virtuous, but her virtue was not the result of any effort, merit, or even consciousness. In the midst of this whirlwind, this artificial air and warm atmosphere, exposed to all the opportunities and temptations of society life, she had neither the heart which a woman must have who is given to dreaming nor enough intelligence to be bored by such an existence. She had neither the curiosity nor the inclination which might have led her astray. Hers was one of those happy, narrow-minded dispositions which have not enough in them to go wrong. She had that unassailable virtue, common to many Parisian women who are not even touched by the temptations which pass over them: she was virtuous just in the same way as marble is cold. Physically, even, as it happens sometimes with lymphatic and delicate natures, the effect of society life on her had been to free her from all other desires by using up her strength, her nervous activity, and the movement of the little blood she had in her body, in the rushing about on visits and shopping, the effort of making herself agreeable, the fatigue of evening parties, resulting in utter weariness at night, and enervation the next day. There are society women in Paris who, by the amount of vitality and vigour they expend, and by the intense application of their energy and grace, remind one of circus-riders and tight-rope dancers, whose temperament suffers from the fatigue of their exercises. * * * * * Mme. Mauperin and her daughter met Mme. Davarande in her dining-room, accompanying a smooth-faced gentleman with blue spectacles to the door. She was extremely amiable to him, and when she had seen him out she returned to her mother and sister.