bouquet, he had dropped it under the
wheels of a carriage, or there were no flowers to be had in all Paris.
Ah! there's a fellow who only cares for himself, and no mistake.'

Jory, without getting in the least angry, tilted back his chair and
sucked his cigar, merely saying with a sneer:

'Oh! if you see Fagerolles now--'

'Well, what of it?' she cried, becoming furious. 'It's no business of
yours. I snap my fingers at your Fagerolles, do you hear? He knows very
well that people don't quarrel with me. We know each other; we sprouted
in the same crack between the paving-stones. Look here, whenever I like,
I have only to hold up my finger, and your Fagerolles will be there on
the floor, licking my feet.'

She was growing animated, and Jory thought it prudent to beat a retreat.

'_My_ Fagerolles,' he muttered; '_my_ Fagerolles.'

'Yes, _your_ Fagerolles. Do you think that I don't see through you both?
He is always patting you on the back, as he hopes to get articles out of
you, and you affect generosity and calculate the advantage you'll derive
if you write up an artist liked by the public.'

This time Jory stuttered, feeling very much annoyed on account of Claude
being there. He did not attempt to defend himself, however, preferring
to turn the quarrel into a joke. Wasn't she amusing, eh? when she blazed
up like that, with her lustrous wicked eyes, and her twitching mouth,
eager to indulge in vituperation?

'But remember, my dear, this sort of thing cracks your Titianesque
"make-up,"' he added.

She began to laugh, mollified at once.

Claude, basking in physical comfort, kept on sipping small glasses of
cognac one after another, without noticing it. During the two hours
they had been there a kind of intoxication had stolen over them, the
hallucinatory intoxication produced by liqueurs and tobacco smoke. They
changed the conversation; the high prices that pictures were
fetching came into question. Irma, who no longer spoke, kept a bit
of extinguished cigarette between her lips, and fixed her eyes on the
painter. At last she abruptly began to question him about his wife.

Her questions did not appear to surprise him; his ideas were going
astray: 'She had just come from the provinces,' he said. 'She was in a
situation with a lady, and was a very good and honest girl.'

'Pretty?'

'Why, yes, pretty.'

For a moment Irma relapsed into her reverie, then she said, smiling:
'Dash it all! How lucky you are!'

Th