when I don't follow your advice. Have
some more wine,--I call that good."

"It ought to be at two francs a bottle," she retorted.

"My father would call this rank poison, but it goes."

"Poor me! I never tasted any better," laughed the girl, sipping the
wine with the air of a connaisseuse. "A litre a cinquante is my
tipple," she said.

"Now, what the devil do all these people mean?" he asked, when a party
had passed them with a slight demonstration.

"That you are famous, monsieur. I wish we had remained at home."

"So do I, petite," he said.

"Let us take our coffee there, at least," she suggested.

"Good!" he cried,--"by all means!"

They were soon installed in his small salon, where she quickly spread
a table of dainty china. She had agreed with him in keeping his
pictures, bric-a-brac, and prettiest dishes.

"Ah! they are so sweet!" she would say. "Now here is a lovely blue cup
for you. I take the dear little pink one,--it's as delicate as an
egg-shell,--Sevres, surely! And here's some of my coffee. It is not as
good, perhaps, as you are used to, but----"

"Oh, I'm used to anything,--except being stared at and mobbed by a lot
of curious chaps as if I were a calf with six legs, or had run off
with the President's daughter, or----"

"Or committed murder, eh?" said she. "People always stare at
murderers, do they not? Still, it isn't really bad, you know,"
abruptly returning to the coffee, "with a petit verre and cigarette."

"Au contraire," he retorted, gayly.

And over their coffee and cognac and cigarettes, surrounded by his
tasteful belongings, shut in by the heavy damask hangings, under the
graceful wreaths of smoke, they formed a very pretty picture. He,
robust, dark, manly; she, frail, delicate, blonde, and distinctively
feminine.

The comfort of it all smote them alike. The conversation soon became
forced, then ceased, leaving each silently immersed in thought.

But Mlle. Fouchette welcomed this interval of silence with a
satisfaction inexpressible. She, too, was under the spell of the place
and the occasion. Mlle. Fouchette was not a sentimental woman, as we
have seen; but she had recently been undergoing a mental struggle that
taxed all her practical common sense. She found now that she saw
things more clearly.

The result frightened her.

Mlle. Fouchette felt that she was happy, therefore she was frightened.

She experienced a mysterious glow of gladness--the gladness of mere
living--