hat. Give me your arm, I will show you
'Jesus Walking on the Waters' myself; it is right away at the end,
beyond the conservatory. Papa had it put there so that they should be
obliged to see everything before they could get to it. It is astonishing
how he is showing off this place."

They went on quietly among the crowd. People turned round to look at
this good-looking fellow and this charming little doll. A well-known
painter said: "What a pretty pair. They go capitally together."

George thought: "If I had been really clever, this is the girl I should
have married. It was possible. How is it I did not think of it? How did
I come to take that other one? What a piece of stupidity. We always act
too impetuously, and never reflect sufficiently."

And envy, bitter envy, sank drop by drop into his mind like a gall,
embittering all his pleasures, and rendering existence hateful.

Susan was saying: "Oh! do come often, Pretty-boy; we will go in for all
manner of things now, papa is so rich. We will amuse ourselves like
madcaps."

He answered, still following up his idea: "Oh! you will marry now. You
will marry some prince, a ruined one, and we shall scarcely see one
another."

She exclaimed, frankly: "Oh! no, not yet. I want someone who pleases me,
who pleases me a great deal, who pleases me altogether. I am rich enough
for two."

He smiled with a haughty and ironical smile, and began to point out to
her people that were passing, very noble folk who had sold their rusty
titles to the daughters of financiers like herself, and who now lived
with or away from their wives, but free, impudent, known, and respected.
He concluded with: "I will not give you six months before you are caught
with that same bait. You will be a marchioness, a duchess or a princess,
and will look down on me from a very great height, miss."

She grew indignant, tapped him on the arm with her fan, and vowed that
she would marry according to the dictates of her heart.

He sneered: "We shall see about all that, you are too rich."

She remarked: "But you, too, have come in for an inheritance."

He uttered in a tone of contempt: "Oh! not worth speaking about.
Scarcely twenty thousand francs a year, not much in these days."

"But your wife has also inherited."

"Yes. A million between us. Forty thousand francs' income. We cannot
even keep a carriage on it."

They had reached the last of the reception-rooms, and before them lay
the conservatory--a