result as pride
itself. One looks too high, the other too low; but both pass by the
petty vanities of life and either of them can keep us equally
indifferent to those vanities.

2

I rose from my seat with a happy heart. The time had come for me to go
in search of her. I would kiss her in all gratitude. Had she not
enlarged my will to the extent of making it admit her little existence?

I went through the silent streets, in search of the charming, old-world
name that was to tell me where the aged spinster lived. Rose had said
that I should see it written over the door in blue letters and that it
was opposite a place where they sold sportsmen's and anglers'
requisites, a shop with a sign that would be certain to attract my
attention.

I therefore walked along with a sure step and suddenly, at a
street-corner, saw a great silver fish flashing to and fro in the breeze
at the end of a long line. Soon I was in a quiet backwater of the town.
There it was! Opposite me, the last gleams of the setting sun shed their
radiance on a very bright little house covered with a luxuriant vine. On
one side, in the same golden light, the name of Isaline Coquet smiled
in sky-blue letters.

The shop was white, with pearl-grey shutters; and on the ledges were
bunchy plants gay with pink, starry flowers. In the window, a few
starched caps looked as if they were talking scandal on their respective
stands.

I walked in. The opening of the door roused the tongue of a little rusty
bell, but nobody came. On a big grandfather's chair, near the counter,
were a pair of spectacles and a book. Perhaps Mlle. Coquet had run away
when she caught sight of me through the panes; Rose said that she was
shy and a little frightened at the thought of my coming visit. And I had
the pleasure of looking for my Rose as I followed the mysterious turns
of a primitive passage.

The walls were spotless and the red-tiled floor shone in the half-light.
I crossed a neat little kitchen, just as a cuckoo-clock was chiming
five, and found myself on the threshold of a small room opening on a
garden. Rose was sitting in the wide, low window.

The noise of the clock no doubt deadened the sound of my steps, for the
girl did not turn her head. The room exhaled a faint perfume as of
incense and musk; and I seemed to hold all her peaceful little life in
my breath and in that swift glance. All that I could see of her face was
one cheek and the tips of her long eyelashes.