n his easy-chair a little being to
sing and chatter and mix his punch and make his cigarettes. Ah! how much
more entrancing would be Ralph's chamber with Suzette to garnish it! He
would make a thousand studies of her face; she should be his model, his
professor, his divinity! What was gross in her he would refine; what
dark he would make known. They would walk together by the river side,
into the parks, into the open country. He would know no regrets for the
friends across the sea. Europe would become beautiful to him, and his
art would find inspiration from so much loveliness. No indissoluble tie
would bind them, to make kindness a duty and love necessity. No social
tyranny should prescribe where he should visit, and where she should
not. The hues of the picture deepened and brightened as he imagined it.
He was resolved to do this thing, though a phantom should come to his
bedside every night, and every shadow be his accusation.

He committed to memory some phrases of French; Terrapin was his
interpreter, and they went together--those three and a sober
_cocher_--to the Bois de Boulogne. Terrapin stated to Suzette in a
shockingly informal way that Ralph loved her and would give her a
beautiful chamber and relieve her from the drudgery of the glove-shop.

They were passing down the broad, gravelled drive, with the foliage
above them edged with moonlight, the mock cataract singing musically
below, and the _cocher_, half asleep, nodding and slashing his horses.
And while Terrapin turned his head and made himself invisible in
cigar-smoke, Ralph folded Suzette to his breast, and kissed her once so
demonstratively that the _cocher_ awoke with a spring and nearly fell
off the box, but was quite too much of a _cocher_ to turn and
investigate the matter.

That was the ceremony, and that night the nuptials. Few young couples
make a better commencement. She gave him a list of her debts, and he
paid them. They removed from Ralph's dim quarters to a cheap and
cheerful chamber upon the new Boulevard. It was on the fifth floor; the
room was just adapted for so little a couple. Superficially observed,
the furniture resolved itself into an enormous clock and a monstrously
fine mirror; but after a while you might remark four small chairs and a
great one, a bureau and a wardrobe, a sofa and a canopied bed; and just
without the two gorgeously curtained windows lay a cunning balcony,
where they could sit of evenings, with the old ruin of