, it is as elegant as a lady's chamber," said Jacqueline, slipping
into it as she spoke, with an exciting consciousness of doing something
she ought not to do.

"What an insult, when I thought all my tastes were simple and severe,"
he replied; but he had not followed her into the chamber, withheld by
an impulse of modesty men sometimes feel, when innocence is led into
audacity through ignorance.

"What lovely flowers you have!" said Jacqueline, from within. "Don't
they make your head ache?"

"I take them out at night."

"I did not know that men liked, as we do, to be surrounded by flowers.
Won't you give me one?"

"All, if you like."

"Oh! one pink will be enough for me."

"Then take it," said Marien; her curiosity alarmed him, and he was
anxious to get her away.

"Would it not be nicer if you gave it me yourself?" she replied, with
reproach in her tones.

"Here is one, Mademoiselle. And now I must tell you that I want to
dress. I have to go out immediately."

She pinned the pink into her bodice so high that she could inhale its
perfume.

"I beg your pardon. Thank you, and good-by," she said, extending her
hand to him with a sigh.

"Au revoir."

"Yes--'au revoir' at home--but that will not be like here."

As she stood there before him there came into her eyes a strange
expression, to which, without exactly knowing why, he replied by
pressing his lips fervently on the little hand he was still holding in
his own.

Very often since her infancy he had kissed her before witnesses, but
this time she gave a little cry, and turned as white as the flower whose
petals were touching her cheek.

Marien started back alarmed.

"Good-by," he said in a tone that he endeavored to make careless--but in
vain.

Though she was much agitated herself she failed not to remark his
emotion, and on the threshold of the atelier, she blew a kiss back to
him from the tips of her gloved fingers, without speaking or smiling.
Then she went back to Fraulein Schult, who was still sitting in the
place where she had left her, and said: "Let us go."

The next time Madame de Nailles saw her stepdaughter she was dazzled by
a radiant look in her young face.

"What has happened to you?" she asked, "you look triumphant."

"Yes--I have good reason to triumph," said Jacqueline. "I think that I
have won a victory."

"How so? Over yourself?"

"No, indeed--victories over one's self give us the comfort of a good
conscience, but they d