ed because I fancy I have seen you before somewhere. I
recognise your eyes!" Henri Verbier smiled, and looked meaningly at the
girl. "Mlle. Jeanne, on summer nights like this, when you are looking at
a lovely view like this, don't you have a funny sort of feeling?"

"No. What do you mean?"

"Oh, I don't know. But you see, I'm a sentimental chap unfortunately,
and I really suffer a lot from always living in lonely isolation,
without any affection: there are times when I feel as if love were an
absolute necessity."

The cashier looked at him ironically.

"That's all foolishness. Love is only stupid, and ought to be guarded
against as the worst possible mistake. Love always means misery for
working people like us."

"It is you who are foolish," Henri Verbier protested gently, "or else
you are mischievous. No: love is not stupid for working people like us;
on the contrary, it is the only means we have of attaining perfect
happiness. Lovers are rich!"

"In wealth that lets them die of hunger," she scoffed.

"No, no," he answered: "no. Look here: all to-day you and I have been
working hard, earning our living; well, suppose you were not laughing at
me but we were really lovers, would not this be the time to enjoy the
living we have earned?" and as the girl did not reply, Henri Verbier,
who like an experienced wooer had been drawing closer to her all the
time, until now his shoulder was touching hers, took her hand. "Would
not this be sweet?" he said. "I should take your little fingers into
mine--like this; I should look at them so tenderly, and raise them to my
lips----"

But the girl wrested herself away.

"Let me go! I won't have it! Do you understand?" And then, to mitigate
the sharpness of her rebuke, and also to change the conversation, she
said: "It is beginning to turn cold. I will put a cloak over my
shoulders," and she moved away from the window to unhook a cloak from a
peg on the wall.

Henri Verbier watched her without moving.

"How unkind you are!" he said reproachfully, disregarding the angry
gleam in her eyes. "Can it really be wrong to enjoy a kiss, on a lovely
night like this? If you are cold, Mademoiselle Jeanne, there is a better
way of getting warm than by putting a wrap over one's shoulders: and
that is by resting in someone else's arms."

He put out his arms as he spoke, ready to catch the girl as she came
across the room, and was on the very point of taking her into his arms
as he had sug