"Gazelle? No—a woman!" he replied..

As he spoke a Moor glided out of the windy darkness, and threw an armful of dry reeds on the fire. The flames flared up vehemently, and I saw that the face of my companion had changed. The hardness of it was smoothed away. Some memory, that held its romance, sat with him.

"A woman," he repeated, knocking the ashes out of his pipe almost sentimentally—"more than that, a French woman of Paris, with the nameless charm, the chic, the—— But I'll tell you. Some years ago three Parisians—a man, his wife, and her unmarried sister, a girl of eighteen, with an angel and a devil in her dark beauty—came to a great resolve. They decided that they were tired of the Fran. . . Read More