hat now
befell him, prepared to accept anything. Nothing could be worse. He
felt as if everything was crumbling beneath his feet. There was nobody
to lean against, nobody to sympathize with him, nobody to care one way
or the other, or----

Only this girl at his side.

He looked at her wonderingly, now that he came to think of her. The
thin, insignificant figure, the pale face, the drooping blonde hair
lying demurely on the cheeks, the bright steel-blue eyes, the pussycat
purr----

"How absurd you are, Monsieur Jean, with that awful face! One would
think it was because of the prospect of my dinner!"

"I am thinking of you," he said.

"Oh, thanks, monsieur! And so savagely--I have fear!"

She laughed gleefully, and affected to move away from him, only, at
that instant, the hind wheel of the voiture struck a stray bowlder,
and the shock threw her bodily back against him.

Both laughed now.

"It is provoking," she said.

"It is the fatality," said he.

And he put his arm about her slender form and held her there without
protest.

"I was thinking of you, mon enfant," he continued, "and of what a
dear, good little thing you are. Mademoiselle, you are an angel!"

"Ah! no, monsieur!" she answered, in a voice that trembled a
little,--"do not believe it! I'm a devil!"

It is easy for a man in deep trouble to accept the first sympathetic
woman as something angelic. And now, in his gratitude, it was perhaps
natural that Jean should unhesitatingly supply Mlle. Fouchette with
wings. He had humbled himself in the dust, from which point of view
all virtues look beautiful and all good actions partake of heaven. His
response to her self-depreciation was a human one. He drew her closer
and kissed her lips.

In this he deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as
well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of gratitude and of
good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his
masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or
ill to her in the matter,--his consideration began and ended in the
gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold
indeed not to feel the friendly glow which answers so eloquently the
touch of womanly gentleness and sympathy.

As for Mlle. Fouchette, it must be admitted that this platonic caress
created in her maidenly bosom a nervous thrill of pleasure not quite
consistent in a young woman known to give the "savate" to young
gen