The scene was inspiriting. With the shades of evening the joyous struggle waxed more furious. The entire street was now taken up by the merrymakers, who made the air resound with their screams and shrieks of laughter. The confetti lay three or four inches deep on the walks, where street gamins slyly scraped it into private receptacles for second use. The haze of dust hung over the broad Boulevard St. Michel like a morning fog over a swamp. Mlle. Fouchette watched the scene for a few minutes without a word. Both were thinking of something else.
"She'll soon get over it, never fear."
"I suppose so," he said, knowing that she still spoke of Madeleine, and somewhat bored at her reappearance in the conversation.
"A woman does not go on loving a man who never cares for her,—who loves another."
"'Loves another,'" he repeated, absently.
"But if Madeleine meets them just now,—oh! look out, monsieur! She's a tiger!"
He shuddered. He was unable to stand this any longer; he rose absent-mindedly and, with scant courtesy to the gossipper, incontinently fled.
"Ah! what a handsome fellow he is! Yet he is certainly a fool about women. A pig like Madeleine! But, then, all men are fools when it comes to a woman."
With this bit of philosophy Mlle. Fouchette buried her dainty nose in the last "ballon." She quenched a rising sigh by the operation. For some reason she was not quite happy. As she withdrew it her face suddenly became all animation.
"Ah!" she muttered, "I'd give my last louis now if that melon, Madeleine, could only see that."