ity as a jelly-fish. She was neither pleased nor
affronted by the vacuous ass's compliments, and when he praised her hair
and her complexion, she accepted it as placidly as if she had been a
waxen lady in a barber's window.

It may have been that this very aloofness of stupidity appealed to him
as a thing to conquer, but, anyway, he got an arm about her waist,
and went on praising her with ridiculous emphasis. She allowed him to
squeeze, and she allowed him to praise, and when he pressed her glass
upon her she sipped at it with reasonable relish and set it down again.
When they had been sitting in the arbour for a quarter of an hour or
so she became loquacious. She said it was a fine day, but that she had
feared in the morning that it would rain. It was a much finer day
than the Thursday of last week had been, for then it had rained in the
afternoon, and since she had been beguiled from home by the treacherous
pretence of the day without an umbrella she had had a feather spoiled--a
feather 'que m'a coute cinq francs, m'sieu!' Paul answered that she was
a little angel, and she told him a parcel of nothings which under fair
and reasonable conditions would have bored his head off. But it is
a notable thing that when a youth is beginning to learn a foreign
language--and Paul was only now entering upon a colloquial familiarity
with French--he has so much satisfaction in understanding what is said
to him that a very stupid conversation can interest him. It is not what
is said which pleases, but the fact that he can follow it, and this,
with a man who is not easily susceptible of boredom, will last him well
into the knowledge of a novel tongue. He gathered from the confidences
exchanged that the young lady lived at home with papa and mamma and her
sister; that papa was engaged in a big drapery establishment, and came
home late at night; that mamma was a suburban modiste, and was also away
from home all day; that her sister and herself did some kind of fancy
work at home--his French was not complete enough to enable him to
understand accurately what it was--and that she always made holiday on a
Thursday afternoon.

Now, Paul had never played the conquering dog until now. He had so far
been the victim of the sex, and in his own small way had suffered scorn
and beguilement enough. What with the luncheon and the sticky champagne,
he began to feel mighty and vainglorious, and he took the airs which
he supposed to be appropriate to