w that's all right." A remark which may have equally applied
to his affairs or to the putting on of her shoes.

"A very simple appartement will serve," he observed, when she sounded
him on his idea of cheapness.

"There is a lovely one de garcon next door to me, but it is dear. It
is a little parlor, bedroom, and kitchen. And this is a quiet house,
monsieur."

"Good! I like quietude, and----"

"Oh, it is a very quiet place," she assured him.

"This appartement,--dining-room?"

"No! What does a man alone want with a dining-room? Let him eat in the
parlor."

"Yes, that would be luxury," he admitted.

"One doesn't need the earth in order to eat and sleep."

"N-no; but how much is this luxury of the Rue St. Jacques?" he
inquired.

"It is four hundred francs, I believe." She heaved a sigh of regret.
It seemed a large sum of money to Mlle. Fouchette.

"Four hundred a year? Only four hundred a year! Parbleu! And now what
can one get for four hundred a year, ma petite Fouchette?"

"S-sh! monsieur,--a good deal!" she exclaimed, smiling at his naivete.
With all his patronizing airs she instinctively felt that this man who
treated her as if she were a child was really a provincial who needed
both mother and business agent.

"I'd like to see it, anyhow," said he.

"At once, monsieur,--so you shall; but it is dear, four hundred
francs, when you might get the same at Montrouge for two hundred and
fifty francs. Here,--I have the key,--le voila!"

It was the appartement of three rooms next door to her chamber, which
seemed to have been cut off from it as something superfluous in the
Rue St. Jacques.

"Why--and Monsieur de Beauchamp is----"

"Gone."

"Yesterday?"

"Yesterday afternoon,--yes. Quite sudden, was it not?"

She said this as though it was of no importance.

"The huissier?" he suggested, official ejectment being the most common
cause of student troubles.

She laughed secretively.

"The police?"

Then she laughed openly--her pretty little silvery tinkle--and drew
his attention to the kitchen.

It was a small dark place with a much-worn tile floor and a charcoal
range of two pockets faced and covered with blue and white tiles; an
immense hood above yawning like the flat open jaws of a gigantic
cobra, which might not only consume all the smoke and smells but
gobble up the little tile-covered range itself upon gastronomical
provocation.

"Isn't it just lovely!" exclaimed Mlle. Fouchette, deligh