around Marianne, reminding Lissac of the intoxicating
perfume of vanished days, an irritating odor as of new-mown hay.

He said nothing, while she awaited his remarks with curiosity. Guy's
mute interrogation possibly embarrassed her, for she suddenly shook her
head and rose to her feet.

"May one smoke here?" she said, as she opened a Russia leather
cigarette-case bearing her monogram.

"What next?" said Guy, lighting a sponge steeped in alcohol that stood
in a silver holder and offering it to Marianne.

She quickly closed her fine teeth on the end of the paper cigarette that
she had rolled between her fingers and lighted it at the flame. The
gleam of the alcohol brightened her eyes and slightly flushed her pale
cheeks, which Guy regarded with strange feelings.

"Your invention is an odd one!" she said, as she returned him the little
sponge upon which a tongue of blue flame played.

He extinguished it, and abandoning himself to the disturbing charm of
reminiscences, watched Marianne who was already half-enveloped in a
light cloud of smoke.

"There is one thing you do not know," he said. "More than once--on my
honor--at the corner of the street, at some chance meeting, my old
Parisian heart has beaten wildly on seeing in some coquettish outline,
or in some fair hair falling loosely over an otter-skin cloak, or in
some fair, vanishing profile with a pearl set in the lobe of the ear,
something that resembled you. Those fur toques with little feathers that
everybody wears now, you wore before any one else, on your fair head.
Whenever I see one, I follow it. On my word, though, not for her. The
fair unknown trotted before me, making the sidewalks echo to the touch
of the high heels of her little shoes, while I continued to follow her
under the sweet illusion that she would lead me at the end of the
journey to a spot where it seemed to me a little of paradise had been
scattered. It is thus that phantoms of loved ones course through the
streets of Paris in broad daylight, and I am not the only one, Marianne,
who has felt the anguish and heart-fluttering that I have experienced.
Often have I found my eyes moist after such an experience; but if it
were winter, I attributed my tears simply to a cold. Tell me, Marianne,
was it really the cold that moistened my eyes?"

Marianne laughed.

"Come, but you are idyllic, my dear Guy," said she, looking at Lissac.

"Melancholy, nothing more."

"Let us say elegiac. Those litt