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 groomed. But after a few seances in the neighborhood of Fifty-Seventh Street, Louise threw herself into this strange new cult with characteristic fervor. This was partly due to the fact that Madame Adèle, the dressmaker, and Monsieur Jules, the hairdresser, had accomplished what good portrait painters often accomplish, and thrown into relief properties of body and soul of which she had never been aware.

At the end of a fortnight she had mastered many rites, and when the last frocks, hats, gloves, and slippers had arrived, and she had adapted her steps and gestures and rhythms to the unbelievable new picture she made, Miriam, for the first time since their association, expressed herself as satisfied.

"I've been waiting to see you dressed," she announced as they sat in the tea-room of a fashionable hotel. "It's the final test. And you pass—magna cum laude. Opposite you I feel dull and not at all what you would once have called distinguished-looking."

"Don't be absurd, Miriam," returned her pupil in an even tone, with a purified articulation that would have made Minnie Hopper stare. "I may cost eight hundred dollars more than you at the moment, but I look new, and you know it. Whereas you will always look good, without looking new, no matter if you're straight out of a bandbox. If I've made any progress at all, the proof of it is that I recognize the truth of what I've just said. . . . Not only that, but you can console yourself with the knowledge that if