hook the first amid all those well-dressed men, who opened their
eyes in amazement. She laughed with an affectionate air, and spoke to
him in a friendly, bantering way.

Fagerolles, however, was already paying for the two chartreuses he had
ordered, and at last he went off with Irma, whom Jory also decided to
follow. Claude watched them walk away together, she between the two men,
moving on in regal fashion, greatly admired, and repeatedly bowed to by
people in the crowd.

'One can see very well that Mathilde isn't here,' quietly remarked
Sandoz. 'Ah! my friend, what clouts Jory would receive on getting home!'

The novelist now asked for the bill. All the tables were becoming
vacant; there only remained a litter of bones and crusts. A couple of
waiters were wiping the marble slabs with sponges, whilst a third raked
up the soiled sand. Behind the brown serge hangings the staff of the
establishment was lunching--one could hear a grinding of jaws and husky
laughter, a rumpus akin to that of a camp of gipsies devouring the
contents of their saucepans.

Claude and Sandoz went round the garden, where they discovered a statue
by Mahoudeau, very badly placed in a corner near the eastern vestibule.
It was the bathing girl at last, standing erect, but of diminutive
proportions, being scarcely as tall as a girl ten years old, but
charmingly delicate--with slim hips and a tiny bosom, displaying all the
exquisite hesitancy of a sprouting bud. The figure seemed to exhale a
perfume, that grace which nothing can give, but which flowers where it
lists, stubborn, invincible, perennial grace, springing still and ever
from Mahoudeau's thick fingers, which were so ignorant of their special
aptitude that they had long treated this very grace with derision.

Sandoz could not help smiling.

'And to think that this fellow has done everything he could to warp
his talent. If his figure were better placed, it would meet with great
success.'

'Yes, great success,' repeated Claude. 'It is very pretty.'

Precisely at that moment they perceived Mahoudeau, already in the
vestibule, and going towards the staircase. They called him, ran after
him, and then all three remained talking together for a few minutes. The
ground-floor gallery stretched away, empty, with its sanded pavement,
and the pale light streaming through its large round windows. One might
have fancied oneself under a railway bridge. Strong pillars supported
the metallic framework,