have quite a _vogue_; and I _am_ a good teacher, I really think I am." "I am sure your pupils are very lucky. You have a great many, you say?" "Yes, quite a lot. Sometimes I give three lessons in an afternoon. With Mademoiselle Lebon, my first pupil, I spend all the afternoon twice a week. She has a gorgeous studio." Hilda smiled again. "It is very nice working there. To-morrow I go for two hours to an old lady; she lives in the Boulevard St. Germain; she is a dear, and a great deal of talent too; she does flowers exquisitely; not the dreadful feminine vulgarities one usually associates with women's flower-painting; why all the incompetents should fall back on those loveliest and most difficult things, I never could understand. But my pupil really sees and selects. Only think how funny! Katherine met her son at a dance one night--the Comte de Chalons--insignificant but nice, she said; how little he could have connected Katherine with his mother's teacher! Indeed, he never saw me," and Hilda's smile became decidedly clever. "I suppose the comtesse--she really is a dear, too--thinks that for a penniless young teacher I am too pretty. Well, I make on an average thirty francs an afternoon. I give Mademoiselle Lebon and Madame de Chalons double time for their money, as old pupils. It would be easier to have a class in my studio, of course, but I would lose many of my most interesting pupils, who don't care about going out; then, too, it would be almost impossible to keep my misdoings undiscovered. And there is all the mystery!" She leaned forward in the dusk of the cab to smile at him playfully. "I am glad to get it off my mind; glad, too, that you should know why I am so often cross and dull; by the time I reach home I am tired. I always bring Palamon, unless it is as rainy as to-day, and of course he puts omnibuses out of the question; omnibuses mount up, too, when one takes them every day. Excuse these sordid details." "I should think that a young lady who earns thirty francs an afternoon might afford a cab." Odd found it rather difficult to speak. She was mercifully unaware of the aspect in which her drudging, crushed young life appeared to him. "And then, what would Palamon and I do for exercise!" said Hilda lightly; "it is the walking that keeps me well, I am sure." His silence seemed to depress her gayety, for after a moment she added: "And really you don't know how poor we are. I have no right to cabs, really. As it is, it often seems wrong to me spending the money as I do when we owe so much, so terribly much. Thirty francs is a lot, but we need every penny of it, for mere everyday life. I have paid off some of the smaller debts by instalments, but the weekly bills seem to swallow up everything."