naturally and completely the code of the little
world, only added to the charm. The Italian was like a slave, from
whom it is necessary to hide nothing and never to blush.

A stuffy little world with a perceptible odour! Ordinarily he had the
common insular appetite for ventilation, but now stuffiness appealed
to him; he scented it almost voluptuously. The ugliness of the
wallpaper, of the furniture, of everything in the room was naught.
Christine's profession was naught. Who could positively say that her
profession was on her face, in her gestures, in her talk? Admirable
as was his knowledge of French, it was not enough to enable him to
criticise her speech. Her gestures were delightful. Her face--her face
was soft; her puckered brow was touching in its ingenuousness. She
had a kind and a trustful eye; it was a lewd eye, indicative of her
incomparable endowment; but had he not encountered the lewd eye in the
very arcana of the respectability of the world outside? On the sofa,
open and leaves downward, lay a book with a glistening coloured cover,
entitled _Fantomas_. It was the seventh volume of an interminable
romance which for years had had a tremendous vogue among the
concierges, the workgirls, the clerks, and the _cocottes_ of Paris. An
unreadable affair, not even indecent, which nevertheless had
enchanted a whole generation. To be able to enjoy it was an absolute
demonstration of lack of taste; but did not some of his best friends
enjoy books no better? And could he not any day in any drawing-room
see martyred books dropped open and leaves downwards in a manner to
raise the gorge of a person of any bookish sensibility?

"Thou wilt play for me?" she suggested.

"But the headache?"

"It will do me good. I adore music, such music as thou playest."

He was flattered. The draped piano was close to him. Stretching out
his hand he took a little pile of music from the top of it.

"But you play, then!" he exclaimed, pleased.

"No, no! I tap--only. And very little."

He glanced through the pieces of music. They were all, without
exception, waltzes, by the once popular waltz-kings of Paris and
Vienna, including several by the king of kings, Berger. He seated
himself at the piano and opened the first waltz that came.

"Oh! I adore the waltzes of Berger," she murmured. "There is only he.
You don't think so?"

He said he had never heard any of this music. Then he played every
piece for her. He tried to see what it wa