I do not like this at all, you understand."

"How you scold me, just for a little pinch of dust!" replied Reine,
turning as red as a cherry as she threw the remainder of the handful
which she had taken from a mole-heap close by them.

"It is because it smarts like the devil," replied the artist, in a
milder tone, for he realized the ridiculousness of his anger; "since you
have hurt me, try at least to ease the pain; they say that to blow in
the eye will cure it."

"No. I'll do nothing of the kind--I don't like to be spoken to harshly."

The artist arose at once as he saw the young girl make a movement as if
to go; he put his arm about her waist and half forced her to sit beside
him.

"The grass is damp and I shall stain my dress," said she, as a last
resistance.

A handkerchief was at once spread upon the ground, in lieu of a carpet,
by the lover, who had suddenly become very polite again.

"Now, my dear Reine," continued he, "will you tell me why you come
so late? Do you know that for an hour I have been tearing my hair in
despair?"

"Perhaps the dust will make it grow again," she replied, with a
malicious glance at Marillac, whose head was powdered with brown dust as
if a tobacco-box had been emptied upon it.

"Naughty girl!" he exclaimed, laughing, although his eyes looked as
if he were crying; and, acting upon the principle of retaliation less
odious in love than in war, he tried to snatch a kiss to punish her.

"Stop that, Monsieur Marillac! you know very well what you promised me."

"To love you forever, you entrancing creature," said he, in the voice of
a crocodile that sighs to attract his prey.

Reine pursed up her lips and assumed important airs, but, in order to
obey the feminine instinct which prescribes changing the subject of
conversation after too direct an avowal, with the firm intention of
returning to it later through another channel, she said:

"What were you doing just as I arrived? You were so busy you did not
hear me coming. You were so droll; you waved your arms in the air and
struck your forehead as you talked."

"I was thinking of you."

"But it was not necessary, in order to do that, to strike your head with
your fist. It must have hurt you."

"Adorable woman!" exclaimed the artist, in a passionate tone.

"Mon Dieu! how you frighten me. If I had known I would not have come
here at all. I must go away directly."

"Leave me already, queen of my heart! No! do not expect to do