His wife does not approve of this hanging up of the fiddle by his own fireside; yet she does the same thing on her side, and is as little a heroine by the domestic hearth as he is a hero. What his talk is to him her beauty is to her; and for whom, let us ask, does she make herself loveliest? For her husband, or for a handful of fops and snobs each one of whom individually is more indifferent to her than the other? See her in society, a very Venus dressed by Worth and Bond Street, if not by the Graces. Follow her home, and see her as her maid sees her. The abundant _chevelure_, which is the admiration of the men and the envy of the women who believe in it, is taken off and hung up like her great-grandfather's wig, leaving her small round head covered by a wisp of ragged ends broken and burnt by dyes and restorers; her bloom of glycerine and powder is washed from her face, showing the faded skin and betraying lines beneath; the antimony is rubbed off her eyelids; the effects of belladonna leave her now contracting pupils; her perfectly moulded form is laid aside with her dress; and the fair queen of the _salon_--the heroine of gaslight loveliness--stands as a lay-figure with bare tracts of possibilities whereon the artist may work, but which tracts nature has forgotten or which she herself has worked on so unmercifully as to have worn out. How many a heartache would be healed if only the heroine, like the hero, could be followed to the sanctuary of the dressing-room, and if the adored could appear to the adorer as does the one to the maid the other to the valet!