"How sweet she looked in the wedding frock that she had stitched! How proud I was of her! Our ménage was two rooms on the left bank; and in the evening, in our tiny salon on the sixth floor, her devoted hands clattered away on her machine, transcribing my manuscript, till I kissed and held them prisoners. Didn't she work hard enough all day for strangers, poor child?--my salary was too small to liberate her. 'You are jealous,' she would say gaily, 'because I write your dialogue so much faster than you.' And often I wished that I could create a scene as rapidly as she typewrote it. But we had our unpractical evenings, also, when we built castles-in-the-air, and chose the furniture for them. I had brought home, from the Magasins, one of the diaries that they issue annually. It contained plans of the theatres--it always does--and, perched on my knee, she pictured a play of mine at each of them in turn, and the house rocking with applause. And then we pencilled the private box we'd have; and drove, in fancy and our auto-mobile, to sit there grandly on the three-hundredth night. "We spent many hours in selecting presents that I would have made to her if I could. One of the things she wanted was, of course, a theatre bag: 'the prettiest that you can pretend!' and I pretended a beauty for her in rose brocade--and inside I put the daintiest enamelled opera-glasses that the rue de la Paix could show, and a fan of Brussels point, and a Brussels-point handkerchief, and a quaint gold bonbonniere with sugared violets in it. I remember she threw her arms round my neck as ecstatically as if the things were really there. We were, at the time, supping on stale bread, with a stick of chocolate apiece." * * * * * The dramatist sat silent, his eyes grown wide. I think that for a moment he had forgotten his new, desirable home and the antiques on the mantelpiece--that he was back in a girl's arms in a room on a sixth floor. Under the window, his wife had ceased to play at horses, and was swinging their son, instead. The child's delight was boisterous. She called up to us now: "Are we a nuisance, messieurs? Shall we go to the nursery?" "No, no," cried Aribaud, starting, "not at all; we are doing nothing. Continue, mon ange, continue!" * * * * *