Roger--yes--your friend Maurice! A miserable
wretch!--he has deceived and ruined the unhappy child! Oh! what
infamy!--and now--now--"

Her deathly pale face flushed and became purple to the roots of her
hair.

"Now Maria will become a mother!"

At these words the poet gave a cry like some enraged beast; he reeled,
and would have fallen had the table not been near. He sat down on the
edge of it, supporting himself with his hands, completely frozen as if
from a great chill. Louise, overcome with shame, sat in the armchair,
hiding her face in her hands while great tears rolled down between the
fingers of her ragged gloves.

BOOK 4.

CHAPTER XIV. TOO LATE!

It had been more than three months since Maria and Maurice had met
again. One day the young man went to the Louvre to see his favorite
pictures of the painters of the Eighteenth Century. His attention was
attracted by the beautiful hair of a young artist dressed in black, who
was copying one of Rosalba's portraits. It was our pretty pastel artist
whose wonderful locks disturbed all the daubers in the museum, and which
made colorists out of Signol's pupils themselves. Maurice approached the
copyist, and then both exclaimed at once:

"Mademoiselle Maria!"

"Monsieur Maurice!"

She had recognized him so quickly and with such a charming smile, she
had not, then, forgotten him? When he used to visit Pere Gerard he had
noticed that she was not displeased with him; but after such a long
time, at first sight, to obtain such a greeting, such a delighted
exclamation--it was flattering!

The young man standing by her easel, with his hat off, so graceful
and elegant in his well-cut garments, began to talk with her. He spoke
first, in becoming and proper terms, of her father's death; inquired for
her mother and sister, congratulated himself upon having been recognized
thus, and then yielding to his bold custom, he added:

"As to myself, I hesitated at first. You have grown still more beautiful
in two years."

As she blushed, he continued, in a joking way, which excused his
audacity:

"Amedee told me that you had become delicious, but now I hardly dare ask
him for news of you. Ever since you have lived at Montmartre--and I know
that he sees you every Sunday--he has never offered to take me with him
to pay my respects. Upon my word of honor, Mademoiselle Maria, I believe
that he is in love with you and as jealous as a Turk."

She protested against it, co