really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to
the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty
centimes even to _un Anglais_), complicated with unwedded nieces in
one case, with a royal shower of New Year's gifts in the other, had
kept them from selfish, if seemly, hoary-headedness.

"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valière at length, with an air
of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my
room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals."

Madame Dépine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner
of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed
behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no
wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile
of her own--the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same
crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of
devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the
same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a
pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments
from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the
folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the
quarter, with steam-trams--diminished to toy trains--puffing past
to the suburbs. But as Madame Dépine's eyes roved from these to the
mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young
woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with
her idea of a Princess!

To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very
noisy here from the steam-trams."