perplexity was the character of his face. Instead of the florid concupiscent face, with coarse lips and fiery eye-balls, I had instinctively expected, I saw a thin, pale face, with mild, melancholy eyes, a gentle face, a refined face, rather a weak face, certainly the very last face the situation called for. He was a beast of course, but he didn't look like a beast. He looked like a gentleman, a broken-down, forlorn old gentleman, singularly astray from his proper orbit.
They were crossing the Boulevard St. Michel as I was leaving the Café Vachette; and at the corner of the Rue des Ecoles we came front to front. P'tit-Bleu glanced up; her eyes brightened, she gave a little start, and was plainly for stopping to shake hands. I cut her dead. . . .
I cut her dead, and held my course serenely down the Boulevard—though I'm not sure my heart wasn't pounding. But I could lay as unction to my soul the consciousness of having done the appropriate thing, of having marked my righteous indignation.
In a minute, however, I heard the pat-pat of rapid footsteps on the pavement behind me, and my name being called. I hurried on, careful not to turn my head. But, at Cluny, P'tit-Bleu arrived abreast of me.
"I want to speak to you," she gasped, out of breath from running.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"Will you tell me why you cut me like that just now?"
"If you don't know, I doubt if I could make you understand," I answered, with an air of imperial disdain.
"You bear me a grudge, hein? For what I did last March? Well, then, you are right. There. I was abominable. But I have been sorry, and I ask your pardon. Now will you let bygones be bygones? Will you forgive me?
"Oh,"
