ed. He stared at them, fascinated.

"_Mon brave Aristide!_" he cried. "If the _bon Dieu_ does not send you
these vibrating inspirations, it is because you yourself have already
conceived them!"

He entered the shop and emerged, not with caporal and cigarette-papers,
but with the twelve Honduras stamps.

That night he sat up in his little bedroom at No. 213 bis, Rue
Saint-Honore, until his candle failed, inditing a letter in English to
Fleurette. At the head of his paper he wrote "Hotel Rosario, Honduras."
And at the end of the letter he signed the name of Reginald Batterby.
Where Honduras was, he had but a vague idea. For Fleurette, at any rate,
it would be somewhere at the other end of the world, and she would not
question any want of accuracy in local detail. Just before the light
went out he read the letter through with great pride. Batterby alluded
to the many letters he had posted from remote parts of the globe, gave
glowing forecasts of the fortune that Honduras had in store for him,
reminded her that he had placed sufficient funds for her maintenance in
the hands of Aristide Pujol, and assured her that the time was not far
off when she would be summoned to join her devoted husband.

"Mme. Bidoux was right," said he, before going to sleep. "This is the
only way to make her happy."

The next day Fleurette received the letter. The envelope bore the
postmarked Honduras stamp. It had been rubbed on the dusty pavement to
take off the newness. It was in her husband's handwriting. There was no
mistake about it--it was a letter from Honduras.

"Are you happier now, little doubting female St. Thomas that you are?"
cried Aristide when she had told him the news.

She smiled at him out of grateful eyes, and touched his hand.

"Much happier, _mon bon ami_," she said, gently.

Later in the day she handed him a letter addressed to Batterby. It had
no stamp.

"Will you post this for me, Aristide?"

Aristide put the letter in his pocket and turned sharply away, lest she
should see a sudden rush of tears. He had not counted on this innocent
trustfulness. He went to his room. The poor little letter! He had not
the heart to destroy it. No; he would keep it till Batterby came; it was
not his to destroy. So he threw it into a drawer.

Having once begun the deception, however, he thought it necessary to
continue. Every week, therefore, he invented a letter from Batterby. To
interest her he drew upon his Provencal imaginati