icoat with its terminating ruffles, or cheap lace balayeuse, her
blonde hair loosely drooping over her ears and caught up behind in the
prevailing fashion of the quarter. She kept up a continual chatter as
she opened drawers, prepared the potatoes, and arranged the little
table.

Poupon was already singing in the chimney-place. Her conversation, by
habit, was mostly directed to her little oil-stove, as if it were a
sentient thing, something to be encouraged by flattery and restrained
by reproach. It was the camaraderie of loneliness.

But to Jean, who was quick to fall back into his own reveries, her
voice died away into incomprehensible jargon. Once he glanced at the
sketch still on the wall and thought of her purring over her work like
a satisfied cat, then the next instant again forgot her. Now and then
she bestowed a keen glance on him or a passing word, but left him no
time to answer or to formulate any distinct idea as to what it was
about. Suddenly she pounced upon him with,--

"Monsieur Marot?"

"Well?"

"You still live----"

"Faubourg St. Honore."

"Mon Dieu! How foolish!"

"Yes,--now," he admitted.

"You must change. What rent do you pay?"

"Fourteen hundred----"

"Dame! And the lease?"

"Two years yet to run," said he.

"Peste! What a bother!"

"But the rent is paid."

"Oh, very well. It can be sold. And the furniture?"

"Mine."

"Good! How much?"

"It cost about three thousand francs."

"It's a fortune, monsieur," she exclaimed, with sparkling eyes. "And
here I thought you were--puree!"

"Broke?"

"Yes,--that you had nothing."

"It is not much to me, who----"

"No; I understand that. I once read of a rich American who committed
suicide because he was suddenly reduced to two hundred and fifty
thousand francs. That was very drole, was it not?"

"To most people, yes; but it would not be funny for one who had been
accustomed to twice or five times that much every year."

"No,--I forgot," she said, reflectively, "about your affairs,
monsieur. It is very simple."

"Is it?" He laughed lugubriously.

"You simply accept conditions. You give up your present mode of
living; you sell your lease and furniture; you take a small place here
somewhere, get only what is necessary, then find something to do. Why,
you will be independent,--rich!"

"Only, you omit one thing in the calculation, mademoiselle."

She divined at once what that was.

"One must arrange for the stomach before