,--it is enough.
Yet now that your affairs are all right and that you are happy, we
must--must part,--it will be necessary,--and--and----" There was a
pleading note in her low voice.

"Well?"

"You have been a brother,--a sort of a brother and protector to me,
anyhow, you know, and it would wrong--nobody----"

The blood had slowly mounted to her neck as she spoke and the lips
quivered a little as she offered them.

It was the last, and when he was gone she felt that it would
strengthen her and enable her to bear up under the burden she had laid
upon herself. She went about the additional preparations for the
dinner mechanically.

There was not a happier quartette in all Paris on this eventful
evening than that which sat around the little table in Jean Marot's
humble appartement in ancient Rue St. Jacques.

And poor little Mlle. Fouchette!

The very sharpness of the contrast made her patient, resolute
abnegation more beautiful, her sacrifice more complete, her poignant
suffering more divine. Unconsciously she rose towards the elevated
plane of the Christ. She wore the crown of thorns in her heart; on her
face shone the superhuman smile of sainthood.

If in his present sudden and overwhelming happiness Jean forgot Mlle.
Fouchette except when she was actually before him he must be forgiven.
But neither his father nor Henri Lerouge was so blind, though the
latter evidently saw Mlle. Fouchette from a totally different point of
view.

The gracious manner and encouraging smile of Mlle. Remy happily
diverted Fouchette from the consideration of her critics. Every kind
word and every smile went home to Mlle. Fouchette. And for the moment
she gave way to the pleasure they created, as a stray kitten leans up
against a warm brick. Sometimes it seemed as if she must break down
and throw herself upon the breast of this lovely girl and claim her
natural right to be kept there, forever next to her heart!

At these moments she had recourse to her kitchen, where she had time
to recover her equilibrium. But Fouchette was a more than ordinarily
self-possessed young woman. She had been educated in a severe school,
though one in which the emotions were permitted free range. It was
love now which required the curb.

She served the dinner mechanically, but she served it well. Amid the
wit and badinage she preserved the shelter of her humble station.

Yet she knew that she was the frequent subject of their conversation.
She saw