Madame got up hastily, murmured a "no, oh no," and disappeared down the hall. Isabelle opened the windows, fell on her knees and set to work with energy, suppressing (lest her mistress still be within earshot) the lively dance-air which came to her lips, as she rattled the brush against the furniture and base-boards. She would be nineteen at her next birthday. What a lovely spring day, how sweet the air was, Jeanne had promised to let her walk out beyond the city-walls next Sunday afternoon with Pierre, and she had a new pair of shoes, real leather shoes, to show off there. Perhaps Pierre would take her to a confiserie and buy her some candied chestnuts! Her pulse beat strong and full, the dance-tune jigged merrily inside her head, she reached far under the bed with her brush, and enjoyed so heartily the elastic stretch and recoil of the muscles in her stout shoulders, that she reached again and again, although there was no need for it. "Jig! Jig! Pr-r-rt!" went the dance tune in her head ... new shoes ... sunshine ... candied chestnuts ... Pierre ... kisses. Her mistress, detesting the sight of Isabelle's broad, vacuous face had walked aimlessly away, anywhere to escape the slatternly flap of her heelless sandals, and the knock of her brush as she went through the never-varying routine of the morning cleaning. Around and around, every slow dawn brought exactly the same sequence of tiresome, insignificant events. Only stolid, vegetable natures like Isabelle's could endure it. Flora's small, thin, white hands fluttered piteously out into the air as though trying physically to lay hold on something else. There _must_ be something else. The tears stood for a moment in her blue eyes, not so blue now as they had been--oh, she knew how they were fading!