only by a dead man's name: who is injured? What harm can there be in humouring the fanaticism of fashion? Choose—I am in haste."
René hid his face with his hands, so that he should not behold those dear creations of his genius which so cruelly, so innocently, assailed him with a temptation beyond his strength.
"Choose for me—you!" he muttered in his agony to Lili.
Lili, white as death, drew closer to him.
"My René, your heart has chosen," she murmured through her dry and quivering lips. "You cannot buy honour by a fraud."
René lifted his head and looked straight in the eyes of the man who held the scales of his fate, and could weigh out for his whole life's portion either fame and fortune or obscurity and famine.
"Sir," he said slowly, with a bitter tranquil smile about his month, "my garret is empty, but it is clean. May I trouble you to leave it as you found it?"
So they were strong to the end, these two famished children of frivolous Paris.
But when the door had closed and shut their tempter out, the revulsion came: they wept those tears of blood which come from the hearts' depths of those who have seen Hope mock them with a
