Year: 1873

kind OF creature can she be In private life,
| wonder? | wonder if she wears that
costume all the time, and if she springs to
her meals from a horizontal bar Of
course she rocks the baby to sleep on the
trapeze." And Van Twiller went on
making comical domestic tableaux Of
Mademoiselle Zabriski, like the clever,
satirical dog he was, until the curtain
rose.


This was ON Friday, There was a
matinee the next day, and he attended
that, though he had secured seat for
the usual evening entertainment. Then
it became a habit of Van Twiller's to drop
into the theater for half an hour or so
every night, to assist at the interlude, IN
which she appeared. He cared only for
her part of the programme, and timed his
visits accordingly. 1t was surprise to
himself when he reflected, one morning,
that he had not missed single perform
ance of Mademoiselle Olympic for two
weeks.


"This will never do" said Van Twiller
"Olympe"-he called her Olympic, as if
she were an old acquaintance, and so she
might have been considered by that time
SIS wonderful creature; but this will
never do. Van, my boy, you must reform
this altogether


But half past nine that night saw him
in his accustomed orchestra chair, and so
on for another week A habit leads a
man so gently in the beginning that he
does not perceive he is led,-with what
silken threads and down what pleasant
avenues it leads him! By and by the
soft silk threads become iron chains, and
the pleasant avenues, Avernus


Quite new element had lately entered
into Van TwiIler's enjoyment of Ma
demoiselle Olympe's ingenious feats,-a
vaguely born apprehension that she might
slip from that swinging bar, that one of
the thin cords supporting it might snap,
and let her go headlong from the dizzy
height. Now and then, for terrible in
slant, he would imagine her lying a
glittering, palpitating heap at the foot
lights, with no color in her lips! Some
times it seemed as if the girl were tempt
ing this kind of fate. 1t was hard,
bitter life, and nothing but poverty and
sordid misery at home could have driven
her to it, What if she should end it all
some night, by just unclasping that little
hand? 1t looked SO small and white
from where Van Twiller sat!


This frightful idea fascinated while it
chilled him, and helped to make it nearly
impossible for him to keep away from the
theater. In the beginning his attendance
had not interfered with his social duties
or pleasures; but now lie came to find it
distasteful after dinner to do anything
but read, or walk the streets mlessly,
until it was time to go to the play. When
that was over, he was in no mood to go
anywhere but to his rooms. So he drop
ped away by insensible degrees from his
l. u, 1n,,, 10. :
be talked about at the club. Catching
some intimation of this, he ventured no
more in the orchestra stalls, but shrouded
himself behind the draperies Of the
private box in which Delaney and |
thought we saw him on one occasion.


Now, l find it very perpleXing to ex-
plain what Van Twiller was wholly un-
able to explain to himself. He was
not in love with Mademoiselle Olympic.
He had no wish to speak to her, or to
hear her speak. Nothing could have been
easier, and nothing further from his de-
sire, than to know her personally. A
Van Twiller personally acquainted with
strolling female acrobat! Good heavens!
That was something possible only with
the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken
from her theatrical setting, from her lofty
perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, and
Olympe Zabriski would have shocked
every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller'S
body. He was simply fascinated by her
grace and elan, and the mag
netic recklessness of the girl. 1t was
very young in him and very weak, and no
member of the SOrosis, or all the SOrosis-
ters together could have been more severe
on Van Twiller than be was on himself.
To be weak, and to know it, is something
of a punishment for a proud man. Van
Twiller took his punishment, and went to
the theater regularly.


When her engagement comes to an
end" he meditated, that will finish the
business"


Mademoiselle Olympe's engagement
finally did come to an end, and she de-
parted. But her engagement had been
highly beneficial to the treasury chest of
the uptown theater, and before Van
Twiller could get over missing her, she
had returned from short Western tour,
and her immediate temperance was un-
derlined on the play-bills.


On dead-wall opposite the windows
of Van Twiller's sleeping-room there ap
peared as if by magic, an aggressive post
er with MADEMOIsELLE OLYMPE ZABRIsKI
on it at least a foot high. This thing
stared him in the face when he woke up,
one morning. 1t gave him a sensation as
if she had called on him overnight and
left her card.


From time to time through the day he
regarded that poster with sardonic eye.
He had pitilessly resolved not to repeat
the folly of the previous month. To say
that this moral victory cost him nothing
would be to deprive it of merit. 1t cost
him many internal struggles. 1t is a fine
thing to see a man seizing his temptation
by the throat, and wrestling with it, and
trampling it under foot, like ST. Anthony.
This was the spectacle Van Twlller was
exhibiting to the angels.


The evening Mademoiselle Olympic was
to make her temperance, Van Twiller,
having dined at the club and feeling more
like himself than he had for weeks, re-
turned TO his chamber, and, putting on
dressing gown and slippers, piled up the
greater portion of his library about him,
and fell to reading assiduously. There is
nothing like quiet evening at home with
some slight intellectual occupation, after
ones feathers have been stroked the wrong
way.


When the lively French clock on the
the mantel- -piece,-a base of malachite
surmounted by a flying bronze Mercury
with its arms spread gracefully on the air,
and not remotely suggestive of Mademol-
selle Olympic in the act of executing her
grand flight from the trapeze,-when the
clock, I repeat, struck nine, Van Twiller
paid no attention to it. That was certain
iy triumph. I am anxious to render