intimate terms with this
intoxicating young person, who answered to the nickname "Bobinette."
Her features, though irregular, were pleasing. Sprung from the people,
Bobinette had tried to remedy this by becoming a past mistress of
postures, of attitudes. Like others of her kind, from her very
childhood she had learned to adapt herself to whatever company she was
in, picking up almost intuitively those shades of taste, of tact,
which can transform the most unconsidered daughter of the people into
the most fastidious of Parisiennes.

It was the contrary as regards Captain Brocq, an artillery
staff-officer and attached to the Ministry of War. Notwithstanding his
intellectual capacities and his professional worth, so highly valued
by his chiefs, he always remained the man of humble origin, somewhat
gauche, timid, who was evidently better fitted to be at the head of a
battery on the bastions of a fortress than frequenting the gossipy
clubs of officials or society drawing-rooms. Brocq, who had passed out
of the Military Academy exceedingly well, had been given an important
post recently: a confidential appointment at the Ministry of War.
During the first years of his military life Brocq had been entirely
preoccupied by his profession. Of a truth, as pretty Bobinette had
just told him, he was not at all "a man accustomed to women." This was
why, when verging on forty, his heart, as young, as fresh as a
student's, had suddenly caught fire when he happened to meet
Bobinette.

Who was this woman?

Brocq could not place her with that mathematical exactitude dear to
his scientific mind. She puzzled this honest man, who fell deeper and
deeper in love with her. Whenever they met, and their first tender
effusions were over, the lovers exchanged ideas, and always on the
same subject.

* * * * *

Bobinette had completed her toilet. In leisurely fashion she came over
to her lover and seated herself beside him. Brocq, who was thinking
deeply, remained silent.

"What are you thinking about?" Bobinette suddenly asked, in a chaffing
tone. "Have you solved a new problem, or are you thinking of a dark
woman?"

Brocq smiled. Amorously he put his arm round the girl's supple
figure; drawing her to him, and burying his lips in her abundant and
perfumed hair, he murmured tenderly:

"I am thinking of the future, of our future."

"Good gracious me!" replied Bobinette, withdrawing herself from his
arms. "Yo