them there. And there are so many other gardens, are n't there? But this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired."

We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook them into place.

"It 's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean I did n't understand. I thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know you better, and I suggested this."

Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. "I'm very, very sorry," she gurgled, with oh, such vagueness! "It's my one corner. My one place to be alone. I don't see people here unless I 've asked. them to come." She took up a review and opened it, and her eyes scanned its pages. We were dismissed,-"thrown out," as the Americans say,-and we retreated up the steps, Mollie helping Clive, and down the flagged path and out into the lime-tree alley.

It was a display so complete that it left me, indeed, a little abashed by the success of my manoeuvers, while at the same time I felt that I must n't let Captain Thornton discern the irrepressible smile that quivered at the corners of my mouth. When we were out on the lawn he turned his startled eyes on me.

"Really, you know, I 'd no idea, Miss Elliot-what?" He appealed to me. "That Vera could lose her temper?" I asked.

Clive continued to stare.

"It comes to that, does n't it? What else can it mean?" He looked now at his wife. "To speak like that to you, Mollie! And when she's been saying she wanted so awfully to make real friends with you." Mollie, I saw, was dismayed. The triumph had been too complete. She could not keep up with it.

"I am sure that Lady Vera is very badly overwrought about something," she said.

"She wanted particularly to be alone, and she found us there, and it put her on edge." Actually she was trying to patch up his fallen angel for him.

"But she told me to wait there for her. -Sent me off to wait for her when those people came," said Clive. "It seems to me that it was you she minded finding. And yet she 's been going on about your never coming to talk to her. She's been going on about it like anything." He caught himself up, blushing, and I saw that Vera was all revealed to him. I hardly needed to pluck another pinion from her, though I did n't resist the temptation to do so, saying:

"You see, Vera is rather jealous. She can't bear sharing things-her friends or her dream-garden. She liked to have you there, but she did n't like to have Mollie there. Did she tell you she wanted to make friends with Mollie? She 's never taken any pains to show it, has she?"

"Oh, please, Judith!" Mollie implored. "But he sees it all now, Mollie, so why should n't I say it?" I inquired. "Her point has been, Captain Thornton, to keep you in and to keep Mollie out, and she very nearly succeeded in doing it."

"Please, Judith! It's not only that. She's been such a real friend to you, Clive! I'm sure she is overwrought about something, and it will be all right when you next meet her." But Mollie pleaded in vain.

"I'm hanged if it will be all right!" said Captain Thornton.

Vera made no attempt to reinstate herself. It was part of her strength never to try to recover what was lost. She kept up appearances, it is true, but that was for her own sake rather than in any hope, or even wish, to regain his good opinion. When we all met at tea she came trailing in, with Chang under her arm, and as she sank into her place, diffusing the sanest unconsciousness, she said to Mrs. TraversCray:

"Charlie Carlton 's been killed, have you heard? This war is something more than I can bear."

Charlie Carlton, as I knew, was a

cousin of the recent callers and a most remote friend of Vera's; but it was the best that she could do for the occasion, and all that she was inclined to do, though a melancholy smile, as impersonal as it was impartial, was turned more than once on Captain Thornton and Mollie as she inquired whether they liked sugar in their tea or had enough cream. She had made their tea for six weeks now, and after the first week she had never forgotten that they both liked sugar and both disliked cream. But she thus washed her hands of intimacy while keeping up the graces of hostess-ship. They might have arrived that afternoon.

Mollie and her husband rose beautifully to the situation for their last two days at Compton Dally; that is, Mollie rose, for the husband at such times has only to follow and be silent. I don't think that she could have shown a grace and a distance as achieved as Vera's had it not been. for those charming clothes of hers. You must have something to rise from if you are to float serenely above people's heads; otherwise you merely stand on tiptoe, very uncomfortably. Mollie and Vera might have been two silken balloons,

passing and repassing suavely in the dulcet summer air. And on the last day Vera's sense of dramatic fitness prompted her, evidently, to the most imperturbable volteface: she showed to Mollie a marked tenderness. To Captain Thornton she was kind, perfectly kind, but that she found him rather dull was evident. It might have been Mollie with whom she had spent all those hours in the dream-garden.

"Must you really go, dear?" she asked. Mollie said that she was afraid they must. She had heard from her aunt, who was waiting to take them in, and owing to all Vera's kindness, Clive was now quite strong again. Vera did not insist.

"I've so loved getting to know you!" she said, holding Mollie's hand at the door of the motor on the morning of their departure. "It 's been such a pleasure. You must often, often come to Compton Dally again. Good-by, dear!"

But Mollie knew, and Vera knew that she knew, that never again would they be asked to Compton Dally.

Meanwhile, if the war is n't over and Jack has n't come back, I 'm to go and stay with them next spring on the chickenfarm.

XHIBITIONS of military paintings

are succeeding one another almost without interruption in London and Paris, the organizers being actuated by the double and altogether praiseworthy purpose of arousing the sentiment of patriotism in the young by the spectacle of heroic deeds, and of being a help to the daily more numerous victims of this atrocious war, let loose by a kind of wild and pitiless fatality that for the moment leads one almost to believe that the life of humanity is on the eve of being extinguished in a deluge of tears and blood.

Among these artistic manifestations, by their very nature peculiarly associated with the tragic events through which we are passing, and appealing, moreover, to a public that would scarcely put itself out just now to visit a collection of the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Velasquez, there is one which deserves to be specially noticed and which marks a

red-letter day in the history of art exhibitions, if only because it is made up of elements that do not overstep the domain, wide enough, for that matter, of military painting. It is fair to say that this exhibition has been arranged in a manner to satisfy the most fastidious.

The official opening takes place at the very moment when I am writing these lines, and it is in the splendid quarters of the Salle du Jeu de Paume, in the Garden of the Tuileries, that the public has been asked to visit it.

With praiseworthy prudence the organizers have excluded the work of living artists from this exhibition, so as to discourage the over-production of military canvases which are just now being hastily thrown together under the exciting influence of events. They have limited themselves to collecting works borrowed from the national museums and great private collections-works signed with names that

make up a remarkable list. Among these are placed the last works of Edouard Detaille.

A strange and happy coincidence lends to this rapid survey of a portion of Detaille's work a character of genuinely vital interest. Upon the great expanse of wall, well lighted and in the place of honor, which is entirely given up to the regretted master, there are twenty pictures in water-color, gouache, and pencil that to this very day the Parisian public have never had an opportunity to admire, and for the very simple reason that they come straight from the painter's studio, of which they have been in a sense intimate personal adornments, and many of them are scarcely finished. The public's interest will be further sharpened by learning that after the closing of the Tuileries exhibition all these posthumous works, bequeathed by the artist to the state, will be religiously divided among the various state museums -the Musée de l'Armée, the Museum of Versailles, and the Luxembourg-for the required period of twelve years before they are finally placed in the Louvre.

"The Drum-major of Grenadiers"

General Lasalle

Among these pictures there are some that are really masterly; as, for instance, the epic figure of General Lasalle, one of the most intrepid soldiers in the army of Napoleon I, charging, pipe in hand, in all the splendor of his gold lace, at the head of his cuirassiers. This canvas, absolutely vibrating with life, is at once of a scintillating warmth in tone and overflowing with an irresistible movement. In it Detaille, although already attacked by the disease which was to carry him off, seems to have wished to give an eloquent contradiction to the too frequently unjust criticisms that accused his art of a deliberate coldness, and refused to see in it any inspiration save one, precious, indeed-that of historical studies and military records.

Perhaps it will interest the reader to learn some of the historical details about the famous soldier whose figure Detaille has immortalized in one of his most heroic postures. The Comte Antoine de Lasalle was born at Metz in 1775. In 1793 he was a sublieutenant of cavalry, and distinguished himself in the campaigns of the Rhine and the Moselle by his impetuosity and courage. In 1795 he followed Kellermann to Italy as aide-de-camp, and

was taken prisoner at Brescia. Field-marshal Wurmser, charmed by his personality, released the young officer, who shortly after was made a major. During the campaign of 1797 he distinguished himself at Vicenza, at Rivoli, and in the crossing of the Piave. Taken to Egypt by Napoleon, he was placed in command of a brigade after the battle of the Pyramids, and saved the life of Davout on the field of Ramadieh (1799). He took part in the Italian campaign, and had three horses shot under him at Caldiero. Advanced to the rank of general in 1805, he served in the Prussian campaign at the head of the first brigade of dragoons. At the end of the campaign of 1806, during which he was made general of a division, the gallant swordsman of Egypt and Italy, who always charged the enemy pipe in mouth, proved himself equally bold and intelligent as a leader of the advance-guard. He defeated 6000 Prussians, forced Hohenlohe to capitulate at Breslau with 16,000 men, and at the head of two regiments of hussars compelled Stettin to open its gates to him. At Heilsberg (1807) Lasalle and Murat, rivals in bravery, saved each other's lives. In 1808, Lasalle, having

men.

gone to Spain, saved the army at Medellín, breaking through a square of 6000 The following year, in Austria, he covered himself with glory at Essling, at Raab, and above all at Wagram, where he was killed, in the midst of a charge, by a ball in the forehead. He was barely thirty-four years old. Such, rapidly summed up, is the story of this heroic soldier, whose premature death sent a thrill of grief through the ranks of the victorious army of Wagram and made the great emperor shed tears.

On the same wall with this striking picture the visitor cannot fail to be impressed by two other superb canvases that also do credit to the great painter and represent the presentation to the emperor of the flags taken from the enemy after the victory of Wagram and "The Funeral of General Damrémont" (October 13, 1837). In this latter work the artist transports us to the scenes of the Algerian war, and it is at the very base of the demolished walls of Constantine, where the brave Damrémont fell mortally wounded, that the scene of the funeral ceremony, touchingly noble in its setting of desolation, unrolls itself.