Naturally, and invincibly, she loved life and living; all the high forces and emotions called to her, but also all the patches, stains, and follies of this queer world; and there is no saint, man or woman, of whom this can be said, that has ever repelled the sinners.

It is the difference between St.Francis and St.Dominic! How very little--all the same--could Eugenie feel herself with the saints, on this October afternoon! She sat, to begin with, on the threshold of Madame de Pompadour's apartment; and in the next place, she had never been more tremulously steeped in doubts and yearnings, entirely concerned with her friends and her affections.

It was a re-birth; not of youth--how could that be, she herself would have asked, seeing that she was now thirty-seven ?--but of the natural Eugenie, who, 'intellectual' though she were, lived really by the heart, and the heart only.

And since it is the heart that makes youth and keeps it--it _was_ a return of youth--and of beauty--that had come upon her.

In her black dress and shady hat, her collar and cuffs of white lawn, she was very discreetly, quietly beautiful; the passer-by did not know what it was that had touched and delighted him, till she had gone, and he found himself, perhaps, looking after the slim yet stately figure; but it was beauty none the less.