"The toy that killed him," he added in a low voice, and hurled the fragments over Pazzini's shoulder into the embers. A thin tongue of flame caught at them as they fell, and broke into a brilliant blaze. Pazzini leaned forward suddenly and peered at the little conflagration. "A violin," he said. "A violin," echoed the Comte. "Think of dying for a violin!" Pazzini made no reply. His eyes had met those of the portrait over the chimney--and he was smiling. [Illustration] The Tuition of Dodo Chapuis THE situation was best summed up in the epigram of little Sacha Vitzoff, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, who said that there was room enough in Paris for two and a half millions of people _and_ Gabrielle de Poirier, or for two and a half millions of people _and_ Thaïs de Trémonceau, but that even the place de la Concorde was not sufficiently wide for Gabrielle and Thaïs to pass without treading on each others' toes. It was a rivalry of long standing, nourished by innumerable petty jealousies and carefully treasured affronts. Gabrielle was tall and very slender, with a clear, pale complexion, and hair of a curious dark bronze that in certain lights showed a hint of olive green. So Thaïs called her the Asparagus Woman--la Femme Asperge. Thaïs was short and anything but slim, and brown of hair, eyes, and skin. So Gabrielle called her the Mud-Ball--la Boule de Boue. And neither appellation was pleasing to the object thereof. These two great luminaries of the Parisian demi-monde, blazing crimson with mutual jealousy, followed, for six months of the year, a kind of right-triangular orbit, comprising the restaurant of Armenonville, the race-course of Auteuil, and the Café de Paris, and embracing divers other points of common interest,--the Palais de Glace, of a Sunday afternoon, the tea-room of the Elysée Palace Hotel, the Folies-Marigny, the Salon, and the Horse-Show; and, individually, Gabrielle's apartment on the avenue Kléber, and Thaïs's little hôtel on the rue de la Faisanderie. Between the last two, as regards situation, cost, and general equipment, there was not a straw's weight of difference, save in the estimation of their respective occupants. The apartment had been rented for a term of years, and furnished and decorated, and supplied with four servants, by a Russian millionaire, and the same was true of the hotel in every, save one, detail,--the de Trémonceau's millionaire was a Brazilian. For the rest, Gabrielle was of a literary bent, and wrote occasional feuilletons for the Journal, and short stories, staggering with emotion, for the Gil Blas Illustré: something which, in the opinion of Thaïs, was stupid and all there was of the most ignoble. Thaïs herself was a sporadic feature at the Folies-Bergère, where she sang songs of a melody and a propriety equally doubtful, bunching up her silk skirts at the end of the refrain, with her side toward the audience, and winking, with brazen effrontery, at a spot midway between