oul' Miche. Peter and Stocks waved good-by to the
last revelers, looking somewhat jaded in the fresh morning air. The
two young men, both rather tired, walked slowly. Venders in clacking
sabots pushed their carts ahead of them, shouting their wares.
Crowds of working-people poured through the streets. At a little
restaurant they knew, they had coffee and rolls. While they were
drinking, a girl came in. Peter looked up and saw Denise.

His first thought was that she would have been lovely if she hadn't
been so thin. Then he saw how shabby she was, and how neat. Nothing
could have been more charming than her chestnut hair, or her blue
eyes that had a look of innocence, or her fair and transparent
complexion, though one could have wished she were rosier. She did
not look around with the quick, alert, bright glance of the
Parisienne whom everything interests and amuses; she had the
abstracted and sad air of a child who suffers, and whom suffering
bewilders.

Stocks said, in a low voice, tinged with pity:

"_L'amie de Dangeau_."

Peter received that announcement with a shock of surprise and
distaste. Dangeau was such an utter brute! Handsome in his way,
without conscience or pity, Dangeau would have eaten his mother's
heart to satisfy his own hunger, or wiped his feet upon his
father's beard. The gifted, intellectual, and rapacious savage
seized whatever came near him that pleased his fancy or aroused his
curiosity, extracted the pith, and tossed aside what no longer
amused or served him. There was no generosity in him, only an
insatiable and ferocious demand that life should give him more,
always more! Peter, who both admired and detested him, was sorry for
this gentle creature fallen into his remorseless claws. And he
wondered, as decent men must, at the fatal fascination animals like
Dangeau seem to possess for women.

He saw her occasionally after that, always alone. Plainly, things
were not well with her. Her pale face grew paler and thinner; her
dress shabbier. The look of bewilderment was now a look of pain. Her
eyes were heavy, as if they wept too much. Peter watched her with a
troubled heart. One day Henri, the garcon, murmured confidentially,
as she left the cafe after a particularly slim meal:

"These thin little blondes, they do not last long. That one was like
a rose when I first saw her. _Pauvre enfant_!" And he looked after
her with a compassionate glance.

"She seems--different," said Peter. "It is