ad drawn her curtains.

And in two minutes more she was as oblivious to the world as was Jean
Marot.

CHAPTER XV

It would not be easy to define the sentiments or state the
expectations of Mlle. Fouchette. Whatever they were, she would have
been unable to formulate them herself.

Mlle. Fouchette was simply and insensibly conforming to her manner of
life. She was drifting. She did not know where. She never thought of
towards what end or to what purpose.

Those who know woman best never assume to reduce her to the logical
rules which govern the mathematical mind, but are always prepared for
the little eccentricities which render her at once so charming and
uncertain. The Frenchwoman perhaps carries this uncertainty to a
higher state of perfection than her sex of any other nationality.

That Mlle. Fouchette was the possessor of that indefinable something
people call heart had never been so much as suspected by those with
whom she had come in intimate contact. It had certainly never
inconvenienced her up to this time. To have gone to her for sympathy
would have been deemed absurd. Even in her intense enjoyment of "la
vie joyeuse" her natural coldness did not endear her to those who
shared her society for the moment. As a reigning favorite of the
Bohemian set she would have earned the dislike of her sex; but this
was greatly accentuated by her repute as an honest girl. The worst of
these "filles du quartier" observed the proprieties, were sticklers
for the forms of respectability. And Mlle. Fouchette, who was really
good, trampled upon everything and everybody that stood in her way.

As to her income from the studios, bah! and again bah!

Then what was Mlle. Fouchette?

That was the universal feminine inquiry.

Mlle. Fouchette appeared to Jean Marot in a vaguely kaleidoscopic way
as a woman of no account possessing good points. Sometimes she
appeared to be cold, sly, vicious, and wholly unconscionable; again,
good-hearted, self-sacrificing, sympathetic. But he did not bother
about her particularly, though he covertly watched her this morning
preparing breakfast. It was true, her blonde hair did not look as if
it had been touched by comb or brush, that she wore pantoufles that
exposed holes in the heels of her stockings, that her wrapper was
soiled and gaped horribly between buttons on and off its frontage;
but, then, what woman is perfect before breakfast?

All this did not seriously detract from the fa