because he objected to remaining obscure and unacknowledged at a time when she feared that acknowledgment might do her harm.

"It was said by those who criticised her that such trivialities did not become thus magnified until the interest had ended and Madame was in the processes which led eventually and inevitably to change and to a new lord. But no matter how much truth might secretly underlie this statement, it was certainly undiscerned by Madeline herself, who suffered long periods of indisposition after some of the separations, at which times she was morbidly depressed, almost to dementia.

"Yet the fact was that, with all her apparent pliability and the sweetness that was famous, she was most imperious as to the carrying out of her own will. One could never know the extent of her reserve forces until he opposed her. Her seeming ductility was to be regarded as the graceful concession of a queen. She thought the world revolved around her. And she was right. It did to a very large extent. Only some men grew tired of being expected to follow in the same orbit. And that ended everything. The proverbial self-importance of a reigning artiste, which no words will ever adequately describe, can only be realized when it is slighted."

The only occasion on which this Madame Zerga seemed to become really entangled was when she failed to follow the old advice about being off with the old love before coming on with the new. A man of some distinction had been a friend of hers for a long time. He is described as a rather elderly person who seemed to be chiefly pleased by her brightness and sprightly conversation.

She literally sat at his feet, "worshipping fair average talents as genius," until after years of his partial indifference and during a long separation she fell in love with a younger man—another genius, of course who seemed qualified to make her happy. Then the trouble commenced.

She writes to him from a distance: "You know, My Own, that I have always been candid in telling you about Richard and myself. Oh, you know how I love you- that you are

the one gladness the world can give me. say about Richard?

But what shall I

"Do you know, all this makes me feel like an unfaithful wife. I have told you how little he cared for me; and yet I feel that I am his possession, no matter how unwillingly, in some ways.

"I have been ill all day-ill with anxiety. I have never lived in deceit. And now Richard has returned to this country and will arrive here on Wednesday next. I am wretched

A succeeding letter was partly as follows:

"I don't know whether you will ever forgive me, but perhaps you will understand how for so many years I have reverenced Richard. It was always far from being a marriage, and yet I feel that by every tie of respect and duty I ought to regard myself as his wife.

"And yet you are my lover!! you as long as I live.

I can never cease to love

"What is to be the outcome of this? I am greatly troubled and for you also, my Blessed. But how can I look forward to our marriage as long as Richard lives, or as long as you may not be able to forgive?

"Oh that I were as glass, that all might see me as I am and know how I want to do the right and to save all from hurt!

"On one side, Reverence, and the long habit of willing subservience to a master mind; also the recoil from giving pain to one who has been the truest of friends. And on the other hand, LOVE!! and all the gladness of life!

"What a choice to have to make!

!!"

The story goes on to state that the younger man abruptly decided her doubts by taking his departure, not because he failed to understand and even to sympathize with her sense of gratitude to another, but because he could not avoid disliking himself. It is explained that he knew how her ideals coerced her, and how a combination of extremely fine feelings would probably prevent her from dismissing either of the two who appealed in different ways, as it is said, "to the highest graces of her nature." But apparently he was not

sufficiently artistic" to be able to reverence the catholicity of her genius.

The author says: "He had learned a good deal about the truly artistic nature. He had seen the people of five capital cities worship the greatest singer of the age. He had driven home many times when her carriage was filled to its roof with tribute flowers. He knew her widespread charity. He knew how tens of thousands learned to love her when she materialized their highest ideals in her own person and made goodness seem enchanting. He knew her supreme value to the world; but also her lack of value to him. He had sought a wife - he had received only an artist."

One passage more in this study is worthy of careful consideration. Old D'Artagnan, the art critic who had lived a long life with artists, says:

"If I had a son I think I would only use coercion with him in one case. I would lock him up, I would put him in jail, rather than let him meet the sweet, kind woman whom all the world loves — I mean the really artistic creature who is born to be a permanent gladness to the many, but not to the one; she who must follow her ideals, and whose glory results from ability for continuous change."

If the suggestions contained in the above translations are correct, it will be seen that individual opinion regarding such a many-sided nature as that of the intensely artistic woman is to be received with a great deal of caution. Few people are likely to obtain more than a limited view. for making these quotations is that, so far as were indorsed by one whose status in the seemed to hold a warranty for careful judgment.

And

my reason they go, they artistic world

A

POOR "FAIRLY RICH" PEOPLE.

BY HENRY E. FOSTER.

PAPER of exceptional pathos, contributed by Anna Wentworth Sears, appeared recently in Harper's Bazaar. It had a touch of romance, and dealt both generally and particularly with "The Trials of City-Bred Young Married Couples."

Even without perusing the article, it will be admitted that such couples may have trials and other things too numerous to mention. It generally takes a year or two after marriage for a young wedded pair who have never had any experience in getting married, to become acquainted with each other. They both think that there is but one of them before the nuptial day arrives, especially when the parlor gas burns low and the vulgar, unsentimental world about them is wrapped in slumber. Time disillusions this dream and with cruel index finger points to their duality. Two rockers may thereafter be thought not too many for their restful convenience. Duality may crop out in many other ways; for instance, the husband's mother may have had one way of making bread and pastry, the wife's mother another. But without particularizing, we will concede that a "city-bred couple " will be very likely to encounter "trials," and that these may be more serious than any we have hinted at.

But hold: we unwittingly misapprehend and malign the young city-bred couple whose tribulations are pathetically disclosed by Anna Wentworth Sears. It turns out that they never had a hitch or a jar, and that life with them would have been "one grand sweet song" but for a single overshadowing circumstance. It was their indiscretion, or misfortune, to marry on an income of only $7,000 a year. Fortitude and self-abnegation were not wanting. Bravely they began the battle of life and mutually conspired to curtail their living expenses with the hope of getting through the year somehow without becoming a charge on their parents. But all this

ingenious self-sacrifice proves unavailing. The odds against the ill-fated twain in trying to live on only $7,000 a year are too great, and so at length they succumb to the inevitable, break up housekeeping, mournfully return to the former home of one of them, and quarter on "the old man."

In her opening paragraph the author acknowledges with a suspicion of reluctance that our newly married literary and professional drudges are often also obliged on slim incomes. to face the problems of life, but her sympathetic yearnings are wholly absorbed in contemplating the woes of the citybred couples whose means are so inadequate for their support. Feeling, no doubt, that the reader could not fail to acquire a soulful interest in such an afflicted pair, the confiding writer makes him acquainted with some of their antecedents:

They are young people who are, according to the ordinary standard, fairly rich, who have been brought up and live in our cities, and marrying on incomes varying from $5,000 to $7,000 a year,'are expected on that amount to fulfil all the exigencies of an established social position, to conduct their households, keep pace with the set in which since childhood they have mingled, meet happily their charitable and worldly obligations, dress well, and in all ways lead the kind of life peculiar to luxurious town living at the present time.

After reading the above specifications, which rise in wellsustained gradations to the omnibus climax that such a couple are expected to "lead the kind of life peculiar to luxurious town living," - up to date at that, we may well conceive that the writer might feel anxious as to the ability of these young people on $7,000 to make ends meet, even after doubling up. If the young couple had no other obstacle to overcome except that of being "fairly rich," their case would not appear so hopeless. But it is specified in the bond that society expects them to "keep pace" with their "set;" and as they began practising in their "childhood," it may readily be imagined what a record-breaking gait, or "pace," they would be able to make when they do their level best in double harness.

There cannot be the least doubt about the ability of such a trained city-bred couple getting away with $5,000 or $7,000, and if Anna Wentworth Sears had not expressly stipulated