ses, I have a fleeting vision of a
woman who crossed the shadowy gap--Eudoxie! Eudoxie, the fairy woman
whom Lamuse hunted like a satyr, away back in the country, that morning
we brought back Volpatte wounded, and Fouillade, the woman I saw
leaning from the spinney's edge and bound to Farfadet in a mutual
smile. It is she whom I just glimpsed like a gleam of sunshine in that
alley. But the gleam was eclipsed by the tail of a wall, and the place
thereof relapsed upon gloom. She here, already! Then she has followed
our long and painful trek! She is attracted--?

And she looks like one allured, too. Brief glimpse though it was of her
face and its crown of fair hair, plainly I saw that she was serious,
thoughtful, absentminded.

Lamuse, following close on my heels, saw nothing, and I do not tell
him. He will discover quite soon enough the bright presence of that
lovely flame where he would fain cast himself bodily, though it evades
him like a Will-o'-th'-wisp. For the moment, besides, we are on
business bent. The coveted corner must be won. We resume the hunt with
the energy of despair. Barque leads us on; he has taken the matter to
heart. He is trembling--you can see it in his dusty scalp. He guides
us, nose to the wind. He suggests that we make an attempt on that
yellow door over there. Forward!

Near the yellow door, we encounter a shape down-bent. Blaire, his foot
on a milestone, is reducing the bulk of his boot with his knife, and
plaster-like debris is falling fast. He might be engaged in sculpture.

"You never had your feet so white before," jeers Barque. "Rotting
apart," says Blaire, "you don't know where it is, that special van?" He
goes on to explain: "I've got to look up the dentist-van, so they can
grapple with my ivories, and strip off the old grinders that's left.
Oui, seems it's stationed here, the chop-caravan."

He folds up his knife, pockets it, and goes off alongside the wall,
possessed by the thought of his jaw-bones' new lease of life.

Once more we put up our beggars' petition: "Good-day, madame; you
haven't got a little corner where we could feed? We would pay, of
course, we would pay--"

Through the glass of the low window we see lifted the face of an old
man--like a fish in a bowl, it looks--a face curiously flat, and lined
with parallel wrinkles, like a page of old manuscript.

"You've the little shed there."

"There's no room in the shed, and when the washing's done there--"

Barque se