It was near ten o’clock, one evening, when Elsie Meril ran up the common stairway, and entered the room in the fourth story where she and Jacqueline lodged.

Victor Le Roy, student from Picardy, occupied the room next theirs, and was startled from his slumber by the voices of the girls.  Elsie was fresh from the theatre, from the first play she had ever witnessed; she came home excited and delighted, ready to repeat and recite, as long as Jacqueline would listen.

And here was Jacqueline.

Early in the evening Elsie had sought her friend with a good deal of anxiety.  A fellow-lodger and field-laborer had invited her to see the play,—­and Jacqueline was far down the street, nursing old Antonine Dupre.  To seek her, thus occupied, on such an errand, Elsie had the good taste, and the selfishness, to refrain from doing.

Therefore, after a little deliberation, she had gone to the theatre, and there forgot her hard day-labor in the wonders of the stage,—­forgot Jacqueline, and Antonine, and every care and duty.  It was hard for her, when all was ended, to come back to compunction and explanation, yet to this she had come back.

Neither of the girls was thinking of the student, their neighbor; but he was not only wakened by their voices, he amused himself by comparing them and their utterances with his preconceived notions of the girls.  They might not have recognized him in the street, though they had often passed him on the stairs; but he certainly could have distinguished the pretty face of Elsie, or the strange face of Jacqueline, wherever he might meet them.

Elsie ran on with her story, not careful to inquire into the mood of Jacqueline,—­suspicious of that mood, no doubt,—­but at last, made breathless by her haste and agitation, she paused, looked anxiously at Jacqueline, and finally said,—­

“You think I ought not to have gone?”

“Oh, no,—­it gave you pleasure.”

A pause followed.  It was broken at length by Elsie, exclaiming, in a voice changed from its former speaking,—­

“Jacqueline Gabrie, you are homesick! horribly homesick, Jacqueline!”

“You do not ask for Antonine:  yet you know I went to spend the day with her,” said Jacqueline, very gravely.

“How is Antonine Dupre?” asked Elsie.

“She is dead.  I have told you a good many times that she must die.  Now, she is dead.”

“Dead?” repeated Elsie.

“You care as much as if a candle had gone out,” said Jacqueline.

“She was as much to me as I to her,” was the quick answer.  “She never liked me.  She did not like my mother before me.  When you told her my name, the day we saw her first, I knew what she thought.  So let that go.  If I could have done her good, though, I would, Jacqueline.”

“She has everything she needs,—­a great deal more than we have.  She is very happy, Elsie.”

“Am not I?  Are not you, in spite of your dreadful look?  Your look is more terrible than the lady’s in the play, just before she killed herself.  Is that because Antonine is so well off?”