ved, abruptly and with playful
satire, "I'm going to eat. I'm sorry you are not hungry, but----"

"Eat? Little one," he joyously cried, "I can eat a house and lot!" He
took her bodily between his hands, he who a moment before had been so
weak, and tossed her as one plays with a child.

"For shame! There is no house here for you, but I've got a lot to eat!
There! No more of that, Monsieur Jean, or you shall have no supper!"

As he threatened her again with his exuberant spirits, she wisely but
laughingly put the table between them. But she looked a world of
happiness from her eyes.

From the extreme of mental depression Jean Marot was thus suddenly
transported to the extreme of happiness and hopefulness. Simply
because the life of the man whom he would have done to death, in his
insane jealousy of a successful rival, had become precious, priceless,
as that of the brother of his beloved. The conditions were desperate
enough as they were. To have slain her brother would not only have
rendered them hopeless, it would have condemned the survivor to a
lifetime of remorse, unless, indeed, that life had not been happily
shortened by the guillotine.

So they laughed, talked, ate, drank, and made merry, these two, taking
no thought of the morrow until both the supper and the time necessary
to dispose of it were consumed.

Jean lighted a cigarette that she gave him, and threw himself on the
couch. Meanwhile, the girl, with the assistance of Poupon, got some
hot water and washed the dishes, putting them one by one carefully
back on the shelves in the wall. Finally the empty bottle found its
place under the couch.

Then she discovered that Jean was sleeping soundly. He had succumbed
in spite of rattling dishes and her talk, and slept the heavy sleep of
physical exhaustion. The cigarette had fallen from his fingers half
finished. His throat was still muffled in her silken scarf, but she
tried to see if the marks were still there. For fully a minute she
remained standing over him, buried in thought. The old clock in the
Henri IV. tower behind the Pantheon chimed eleven. She sighed.

"Very well!" she murmured. "Monsieur is right. He has no money, no
keys, and he is weary. He shall rest where he is. C'est egal!"

With this philosophical reflection she immediately began preparation
for retiring on her own account, completing this as if the monsieur
snoring on the couch had no material existence.

"Voila!" said she, when she h