"_Encore, madame!_" Odette begged. "_Vos histoires sont tellement intéressantes._" "Ah, well, one can't live all one's life in Constantinople without picking up a few stories." "Adhesive as burs," Sylvia thought. "But really the best story of all," Madame Corvelis went on, "is to find myself here in this miserable little house. That's a pretty bag you have," she added to Sylvia. "A very pretty bag. Ah, _mon Dieu_, when I think of the jewelry I've left behind." At this moment M. Corvelis came in with the cunningly detached expression of a husband who has been hustled out of the room by his wife at the sound of a bell in order to convey an impression, when he has had time to change his clothes, that he habitually dresses _en grande tenue_. It was thus that Odette described her own preparatory toilet, and she was ravished by M. Corvelis's reciprocity, whispering to Sylvia her sense of the compliment to his humble visitors. "_Homme chic! homme du monde! homme élégant! Mais ça se voit. Dis, t'es contente?_" Sylvia smiled and nodded. The mold of form who had drawn such an ecstasy of self-congratulatory admiration from Odette treated the two actresses as politely as his wife had done, and asked Sylvia the same questions. When his reduplication of the first catechism was practically complete, Odette gave the signal for departure, and in a cyclone of farewells and compliments they left. "_Elle est vraiment une femme du monde?_" Odette demanded. "_De pied en cap_," Sylvia replied. "_Ton sac en or lui plaisait beaucoup_," said Odette, a little enviously. "Ah, when I think of myself eight years ago," she went on, "it seems _incroyable_. I should like to invite them both to tea again _chez Eliane_. If only the other girls were like you! And last time I put too much sugar in her tea! _Non, je n'ose pas!_ One sees the opportunity to raise oneself, but one does not dare grasp it. _C'est la vie_," she sighed. Moved by the vision of herself thwarted from advancing any higher, Odette poured out to Sylvia the story of her life--a sad, squalid story, lit up here and there by the flashes of melodramatic events and culminating in the revelation of this paradise that was denied her. "What would you have done if you had been invited to her house in Constantinople where the carpets and the mirrors are?" "She would never have invited me there," Odette sighed. "Here she is not known. However broad her ideas, she could not defy public opinion at home. _À la guerre comme à la guerre! Enfin, je suis fille du peuple, mais on me regarde; c'est déjà quelque chose._" The _pension_ that to Odette appeared so mean after the glories of Madame Corvelis's little house had never been so welcome to Sylvia, and it was strange to think that any one could be more impressed by that pretentious little _bourgeoise_ with her figure like apples in a string bag than by Madame Eliane, who resembled a mysterious lady in the background of a picture by Watteau.