So when he found himself on the road to Rouen, on Thursday morning, borne on by the sonorous trot of Graindorge, he felt his heart lighter, more rested then it had been since his misfortune.

When he entered Mademoiselle Donet’s flat, he saw the table laid as on the last Thursday, with the sole difference that the crust of the bread had not been cut off.

He grasped the young woman’s hand, kissed Émile on the cheeks, and sat down, rather as if in his own house, with his heart full all the same. Mademoiselle Donet seemed to him a little thin, a little pale. She must have wept a great deal. Now her attitude towards him was constrained, as if she had realized what she had not felt the other week under the first shock of her misfortune, and she treated him with an excessive respect, a sad humility, and a touching solicitude, as if to repay him in attention and devotion the kindness he had shown her. They spent a long time over lunch, talking of the business which had brought him. She did not want so much money. It was too much, much too much. She earned enough to live on, but she wanted only that Émile should find a few pennies waiting for him when he grew big. Cæsar stuck to his ground, and even added a present of a thousand francs to her for her mourning.

When he had taken his coffee, she asked:

‘You smoke?’

‘Yes—I have my pipe.’

He felt in his pocket. Heavens, he had forgotten it! He was just going to get vexed about it, when she offered him a pipe of his father’s, shut in a cupboard.

He accepted it, took it, recognized it, stroked it, proclaimed its quality with emotion in his voice, filled it with tobacco and lit it. Then he put Émile astride his leg, and gave him a horseback ride while she cleared the table and shut up in the bottom of the sideboard the dirty dishes, to be washed when he had gone.

About three o’clock he rose regretfully, quite upset at the idea of going away.

‘Well, Mademoiselle Donet,’ he said, ‘I wish you good afternoon, and I’m delighted to have found you like this.’

She stood still before him, red, very moved, and looking at him, thinking of the other.

‘Are we never going to see one another again?’ she said.

He answered simply:

‘Of course, mademoiselle, if it gives you pleasure.’

‘Certainly it does, Mr. Cæsar. Then next Thursday, does that suit you?’

‘Yes, Mademoiselle Donet.’

‘You’ll come to lunch, surely?’

‘But—if you want me to, I shall not refuse.’

‘That’s settled, Mr. Cæsar, next Thursday, at twelve o’clock, same as to-day.’

‘Thursday, at twelve, Mademoiselle Donet.’