and said: "They are delicious. I feel sure I
shall not leave one of them." Then she added, looking at George with
sensual merriment: "You flatter all my vices, then."

She slowly ate the sweetmeats, looking continually into the bag to see
if there were any left. "There, sit down in the armchair," said she,
"and I will squat down between your knees and nibble my bon-bons. I
shall be very comfortable."

He smiled, sat down, and took her between his knees, as he had had
Madame Walter shortly before. She raised her head in order to speak to
him, and said, with her mouth full: "Do you know, darling, I dreamt of
you? I dreamt that we were both taking a long journey together on a
camel. He had two humps, and we were each sitting astride on a hump,
crossing the desert. We had taken some sandwiches in a piece of paper
and some wine in a bottle, and were dining on our humps. But it annoyed
me because we could not do anything else; we were too far off from one
another, and I wanted to get down."

He answered: "I want to get down, too."

He laughed, amused at the story, and encouraged her to talk nonsense, to
chatter, to indulge in all the child's play of conversation which lovers
utter. The nonsense which he thought delightful in the mouth of Madame
de Marelle would have exasperated him in that of Madame Walter.
Clotilde, too, called him "My darling," "My pet," "My own." These words
seemed sweet and caressing. Said by the other woman shortly before, they
had irritated and sickened him. For words of love, which are always the
same, take the flavor of the lips they come from.

But he was thinking, even while amusing himself with this nonsense, of
the seventy thousand francs he was going to gain, and suddenly checked
the gabble of his companion by two little taps with his finger on her
head. "Listen, pet," said he.

"I am going to entrust you with a commission for your husband. Tell him
from me to buy to-morrow ten thousand francs' worth of the Morocco loan,
which is quoted at seventy-two, and I promise him that he will gain from
sixty to eighty thousand francs before three months are over. Recommend
the most positive silence to him. Tell him from me that the expedition
to Tangiers is decided on, and that the French government will guarantee
the debt of Morocco. But do not let anything out about it. It is a State
secret that I am entrusting to you."

She listened to him seriously, and murmured: "Thank you, I will tell my
hus