lbow to elbow, and before her, were principally women,
some writing with feverish haste, others hesitatingly, and amongst them
were two girls opposite her, who as they finished their letters chuckled
in a low tone and passed them one to the other, say-to each other, as
they chewed their plaid penholders:

"It is somewhat cold, eh! He will say: _Eh, well, it is true then!_"

The two pretty, cheerful girls before her were doubtless breaking in
this way some liaison, amusing themselves by sending an unexpected blow
to some poor fellow, and enjoying themselves by spoiling paper; the one
writing, the other reading over her companion's shoulder and giving vent
to merry laughter under her Hungarian toque, a huge Quaker-collar almost
covering her shoulders and her little jacket with its large steel
buttons.

This feminine head-gear made Marianne think of Guy. Her eyes, catlike in
expression, gleamed maliciously.

She took some paper and essayed to frame some tempting, tender phrases,
something nebulous and exciting, but she could not.

"What I would like to write him is that he is a wretch and that I hate
him!" she thought.

Then she stopped and looked about her, altogether forgetting Vaudrey.

The contrast between that silent reading-room and the many-colored crowd
in that Oriental bazaar, whose murmurs reached her ears like the roaring
of a distant sea, and of which she could see only the corner clearly
defined by the framework of the doors, amused Marianne, who with a smile
on her lips, enjoyed the mischievous delight of fooling a President of
the Council.

"At least that avenges me for the cowardice that the _other_ forced me
to commit!"

Then mechanically regarding the crowd that flowed through these _docks_,
that contained everything that could please or disgust a whole world at
once, the crowd, the clerks, the carpets, the linen, the crowding, the
heaping,--all seemed strange and comic to her, novel and not Parisian,
but American and up-to-date.

"Oh! decidedly up-to-date!--And so convenient!" she said, as she heard
the young girls laugh when they finished their love-letters.

Then she began to write, having surely found the expressions she sought.
She sent Rosas a letter of apology: she would be at his house to-morrow
at the same hour. To-day, her uncle took up her day, compelling her to
go to see his paintings, to visit the Louvre, to buy draperies for an
Oriental scene that he intended to paint. If Rosas