Part 60 (2/2)

”I knew you wouldn't, and that is why I suggested the right bank of the river.”

”True,--I always make a mistake 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 pa.s.sed them with a slight demonstration.

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

”So do I, pet.i.te,” 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-sh.e.l.l,--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 pet.i.t 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--in her veins. It permeated her being and filled her heart with warm desires.

This feeling had been stealing upon her so gradually and insidiously that she had never realized it until this moment,--the moment when it had taken full possession of her soul.

”I love him! I love him!” she repeated to herself. ”I have struggled against it,--I have denied it. I did not want to do it,--it is misery!

But I can't help it,--I love him! I, Fouchette, the spy, who would have betrayed him, who wronged him, who thought love impossible!”

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