Part 51 (2/2)

”Dinner is, is it?” he repeated, almost hysterically.

He felt exhausted physically and mentally, indifferent as to what now befell him, prepared to accept anything. Nothing could be worse. He felt as if everything was crumbling beneath his feet. There was n.o.body to lean against, n.o.body to sympathize with him, n.o.body 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 p.u.s.s.ycat 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 grat.i.tude, 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 grat.i.tude 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 gentlemen who approached such familiarity, and who plumed herself on her invulnerability to the masculine wiles that beset her s.e.x. And what might have been deemed still more foreign to her nature, she never said a word from that moment until the voiture drew up in front of her place of residence in the venerable but not venerated Rue St.

Jacques.

”Voila!” she then exclaimed, though it had not the tone of entire satisfaction.

”Hold on, little one, I will pay----”

But he discovered that those who had cared for him had also benevolently relieved him of his valuables. He had not a sou.

”The wretches!” cried the girl.

”They might have left me my keys, at least,” he muttered.

”And your watch, monsieur?” she asked, apprehensively.

”Gone, of course!”

<script>