"I was thinking of you, mon enfant," he continued, "and of what a dear, good little thing you are. Mademoiselle, you are an angel!"
"Ah! no, monsieur!" she answered, in a voice that trembled a little,—"do not believe it! I'm a devil!"
It is easy for a man in deep trouble to accept the first sympathetic woman as something angelic. And now, in his gratitude, it was perhaps natural that Jean should unhesitatingly supply Mlle. Fouchette with wings. He had humbled himself in the dust, from which point of view all virtues look beautiful and all good actions partake of heaven. His response to her self-depreciation was a human one. He drew her closer and kissed her lips.
In this he deceived neither himself nor the girl. She knew quite as well as he where his heart was. It was a kiss of gratitude and of good-will, and was received as such without affectation. In his masculine egotism, however, he quite overlooked any possible good or ill to her in the matter,—his consideration began and ended in the gratification of her conduct towards him. And he would have been cold indeed not to feel the friendly glow which answers so eloquently the touch of womanly gentleness and sympathy.
As for Mlle. Fouchette, it must be admitted that this platonic caress created in her maidenly bosom a nervous thrill of pleasure not quite consistent in a young woman known to give the "savate" to young gentlemen who approached such familiarity, and who plumed herself on her invulnerability to the masculine wiles that beset her sex. And what might have been deemed still more foreign to her nature, she never said a word from that moment until the voiture drew up in front of her place of residence in the venerable but not venerated Rue St. Jacques.
"Voilà!" she then exclaimed, though it had not the tone of entire satisfaction.
"Hold on, little one, I will pay——"
But he discovered that those who had cared for him had also benevolently relieved him of his valuables. He had not a sou.
"The wretches!" cried the girl.
"They might have left me my keys, at least," he muttered.