"Yes, I have asked the young lady seated there, Mademoiselle Laurence, to give me a dance, and just as I went to take my place I found I had forgotten my gloves. You understand the awkwardness of the situation?"
"My dear boy, I will not say to you, 'You are luckier than being in love,' for it seems to me you are deeply in love; but I will say to you, 'My dear friend, you are in luck's way,' for I have two pairs with me."
And he drew a second pair of gloves from his pocket, as new as the first, handing me those he was trying to draw on.
Such unheard-of luxury astonished me.
"Why do you have two pair of gloves?" I asked.
"Because the first might perhaps split, as I put them on," he replied, with the utmost ingenuousness and as though surprised I should ask him such a question.
His reply staggered me;—it opened such vistas of unknown extravagance of living; there were actually people who took the precaution of having two pairs of gloves, while there were others who had not even dreamed of providing themselves with a single pair.
"Have you a vis-à-vis?" I asked Fourcade.
"No, I have only just come."