allured me."

They were quite alone, the others having gone on into the room set apart
for them, where food was spread. Andre-Louis, who was as unlearned in
Woman as he was learned in Man, was not to know, upon feeling himself
suddenly extraordinarily aware of her femininity, that it was she who in
some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered him.

"What," she asked him, with demurest innocence, "are these
compensations?"

He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.

"Fifteen livres a month," said he, abruptly.

A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very disconcerting. Then
she recovered.

"Oh, and bed and board," said she. "Don't be leaving that from the
reckoning, as you seem to be doing; for your dinner will be going cold.
Aren't you coming?"

"Haven't you dined?" he cried, and she wondered had she caught a note of
eagerness.

"No," she answered, over her shoulder. "I waited."

"What for?" quoth his innocence, hopefully.

"I had to change, of course, zany," she answered, rudely. Having dragged
him, as she imagined, to the chopping-block, she could not refrain from
chopping. But then he was of those who must be chopping back.

"And you left your manners upstairs with your grand-lady clothes,
mademoiselle. I understand."

A scarlet flame suffused her face. "You are very insolent," she said,
lamely.

"I've often been told so. But I don't believe it." He thrust open the
door for her, and bowing with an air which imposed upon her, although it
was merely copied from Fleury of the Comedie Francaise, so often visited
in the Louis le Grand days, he waved her in. "After you, ma demoiselle."
For greater emphasis he deliberately broke the word into its two
component parts.

"I thank you, monsieur," she answered, frostily, as near sneering as was
possible to so charming a person, and went in, nor addressed him again
throughout the meal. Instead, she devoted herself with an unusual and
devastating assiduity to the suspiring Leandre, that poor devil who
could not successfully play the lover with her on the stage because of
his longing to play it in reality.

Andre-Louis ate his herrings and black bread with a good appetite
nevertheless. It was poor fare, but then poor fare was the common lot of
poor people in that winter of starvation, and since he had cast in his
fortunes with a company whose affairs were not flourishing, he must
accept the evils of the situation philosophically.

"Have you a name