I mean for me, you understand, simply for me; that is my feeling on the subject." Clotilde turned her saddened eyes with a steady scrutiny upon her deceiver, who gazed upward in apparently unconscious reverie, and sighed softly as she laid her head upon the high chair-back and stretched out her feet.
"I wish Alphonsina would come back," she said.

"Ah!" she added, hearing a footfall on the step outside the street door, "there she is." She arose and drew the bolt.

Unseen to her, the person whose footsteps she had heard stood upon the doorstep with a hand lifted to knock, but pausing to "makeup his mind." He heard the bolt shoot back, recognized the nature of the mistake, and, feeling that here again he was robbed of volition, rapped.
"That is not Alphonsina!" The two ladies looked at each other and turned pale.
"But you must open it," whispered Clotilde, half rising.
Aurora opened the door, and changed from white to crimson.

Clotilde rose up quickly.

The gentleman lifted his hat.
"Madame Nancanou." "M.