ed to be blocking up the way--a tangible, visible,
provoking conscience--he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and
found the place.

Ralph Flare has often remarked since--for he is quite an artist
now--that of all scenes in art or nature that _boutique_ was to him the
rarest. He has tried to put it into color--the miniature counter, the
show-case, the background of boxes, each with a button looking
mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely
pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world,
flushing and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls
matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes
his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long
walk, and wears a sober face all that day.

We may all follow up the sequence of a young man's thoughts in doing a
strange wrong for the first time. If Ralph's passions of themselves
could not mislead him, there were not lacking arguments and advisers to
teach him that this was no offence, or that the usage warranted the sin.
He became acquainted, through Terrapin, with dozens of his countrymen;
the youngest and the oldest and the most estimable had their open
attachments. So far as he could remark, the married and the unmarried
tradesmen's wives in Paris were nearly equal in consideration. How could
he become perfect in the language without some such incentive and
associate?

His income was not considerable, but they told him that to double his
expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company.
His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel
the man to know more of woman--the processes of her mind, her
capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his
own sex.

Hitherto he had been chaste, though once when he had confessed it to
Terrapin, that incredulous person said something about the marines, and
repeated it as a good joke; he felt, indeed, that he was not entirely
manly. He had half a doubt that he was worthy to walk with men, else why
had not his desires, like theirs, been stronger than his virtue; and had
not the very feebleness of desire proved also a feebleness of power?
But, more than all, he had a weakness for Suzette.

There was old Terrapin, with bonnets and dresses in his wardrobe, and a
sewing-basket on his mantel, and with his own huge boots outside the
door a pair of tapering gaiters, and i