. But what would Father Anton say? What
would Madame Garneau, with whom she lodged, _think_? To go out at this
time of night! It was very late. It was long after midnight, because
it was very long ago when she had heard some distant church clock
strike twelve--and since then it had struck many times, the quarters,
the half hours, only she had lost count.

Marie-Louise drew her cloak a little more closely around her, as she
leaned on the casement of her open window--and then remained quite
still and motionless again.

Irrelevantly it seemed, her thoughts turned on Hector, the concierge.
How very blue Hector's eyes were, and how very red his hair, and
altogether how very droll a figure he made with his absurd
self-importance; and how fat his wife was, whom he so ridiculously
called Mi-mi! And then that conversation between the concierge and his
wife in Jean's salon early that morning, at which she had been present,
began to run through her mind.

"_Tiens_!" Hector had said to his wife. "But will she not make the
thrifty wife for some lucky fellow, our little Louise Bern, here--eh?
She is already waiting an hour in the mornings to be let in. An hour,
mind you, _ma belle_ Mi-mi--and we who think we rise so early! It is a
lesson that! Would you have her standing out in the cold? Why not a
key that she may come in and do her work?"

"But Monsieur Jean," madame had objected mildly, "might be angry if he
knew."

"Monsieur Jean," Hector had replied fatuously, and folding his arms
with an air, "is very well content to leave such matters to me. I do
not pester Monsieur Jean with details. On the night after the
reception, even in the exceedingly bad humour in which I found him,
when I told him that I had thought the matter over, and that the work
was too hard, and that you were wasting away--you see, _ma_ Mi-mi, how
I lie for you--and that I had decided--'decided' was the word I
used--that I must have some one in the mornings to help with the work,
did he not say: 'But assuredly, Hector, assuredly; whatever you think
is right. I depend upon you, _mon ami_.' And does that not show that
we understand each other, Monsieur Jean and I--eh?"

"It was Father Anton, not you, whose idea it was," madame had corrected
with conscientious earnestness. "It was Father Anton, that evening
after we had returned from the Bois and before you had seen Monsieur
Jean, who suggested it, and spoke of Louise here. And that was not