an enthusiast on the subject of calisthenics.  “If I had a daughter,” Van Twiller used to say, “I wouldn’t send her to a boarding school, or a nunnery; I’d send her to a gymnasium for the first five years.  Our American women have no physique.  They are lilies, pallid, pretty—­and perishable.  You marry an American woman, and what do you marry?  A headache.  Look at English girls.  They are at least roses, and last the season through.”

Walking home from the theatre that first night, it flitted through Van Twiller’s mind that if he could give this girl’s set of nerves and muscles to any one of the two hundred high-bred women he knew, he would marry her on the spot and worship her forever.

The following evening he went to see Mademoiselle Olympe again.  “Olympe Zabriski,” he soliloquized as he sauntered through the lobby—­“what a queer name!  Olympe is French and Zabriski is Polish.  It is her nom de guerre, of course; her real name is probably Sarah Jones.  What kind of creature can she be in private life, I wonder?  I 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 a Friday.  There was a matinee the next day, and he attended that, though he had secured a seat for the usual evening entertainment.  Then it became a habit of Van Twiller’s to drop into the theatre 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.  It was a surprise to himself when he reflected, one morning, that he had not missed a single performance of Mademoiselle Olympe for nearly two weeks.

“This will never do,” said Van Twiller.  “Olympe”—­he called her Olympe, as if she were an old acquaintance, and so she might have been considered by that time—­“is a 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 a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller’s enjoyment of Mademoiselle 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 a terrible instant, he would imagine her lying a glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her lips!  Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of fate.  It was a 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?  It looked so small and white from where Van Twiller sat!