These two incidents, peculiar as they are, were the outcome of an occurrence queerer still--an occurrence at the tragic epoch of a woman's life when her glass says: "Stop fooling yourself. You've crumpled to _that_!" Madame de Val Fleury had begun to combat the advance of age the day after she detected the first shadowy threat of crowsfeet, as she turned her perfect neck before the mirror. Her triumph was a fleeting one, and the later conquests were briefer yet. Scarcely had the enemy been driven from the glorious eyes when it crept about the chiselled nose and mouth; no sooner was its attack upon her face withheld than it showed greyly in her hair. But she never abandoned the contest, she fought with Time continuously. And although there were moods of depression, as measures more and more drastic were required, custom and vanity enabled her, year by year, decade by decade, to view her reflection with complacence. She beheld it through a haze of illusion, in applying the colour to her shrivelled cheeks. She did not note that the chestnut transformation that had looked so natural on a counter looked spurious on her head; did not see how piteously the perfect neck had sagged. But one May morning the mirror said: "Stop tooling yourself. You've crumpled to _that!"_ and madame de Val Fleury sat and saw her face withered as it was--and madame de Val Fleury wailed for her lost loveliness as she had never wailed for her dead husband and son. A dress that she was to wear for the first time, and that had cost five thousand francs, lay on the bed. She did not glance towards it. She leant her elbows on the toilet table and stared at the brutal glass. And beyond the glass she viewed the ghost of her empire, scenes where famous beauties had turned involuntarily at her entrance. It was the women's homage, the reluctant admiration of her own sex that she mourned for, as she brooded there. In her backward gaze she saw why, as the years sped, she had squandered more and more on her modistes--saw bitterly that she had struggled to prolong, by her clothes, the fast-waning jealousy of her face. And at Longchamp that day she knew herself to be only an old, unattractive woman, magnificently attired. Not more than a month after this, madame de Val Fleury had the annoyance to lose a pendant sapphire that she was wearing. A reward, not illiberal, was offered, and when she woke from her nap one afternoon she was relieved to learn that the stone had been picked up by a poor girl, who was waiting in the hall to see her. "If she is clean, I will see her here," said madame de Val Fleury. The young girl who entered, in a threadbare frock, had been dowered with beauty so extraordinary that all the lady's pleasure at recovering her jewel was swamped in envy. The eyes, the complexion, the exquisite modelling of the features held her mute for an instant. Subduing a sigh, she said: "I hear you have found my sapphire?" "Yes, madame." "Let me look. Where did you find it?