"You flatter me, sir."
"Not at all—not in the least. But if you are not otherwise engaged it would give me immense pleasure to take you out to supper."
"Shall we go?" she enquired in a winning voice.
Pierre assented.
"You can go home now, Marie," she added to her maid.
Pierre took her to a fashionable restaurant on one of the boulevards, and afterwards saw her home.
"What a pity," he said to himself as he entered his hotel, "I shall have no further opportunity of spending an evening in madame's charming company—well, it can't be helped, but I must try to see her, once more, to-morrow afternoon before I leave."
The next day on opening her newspaper, Madame Paradis's attention was drawn to an account of a dreadful murder which had been committed in Paris on a retired general of the name of Duval, and also on a celebrated professor of science, together with a photograph of the suspected criminal.
"Mon Dieu, but this is interesting."
At this moment M. Adam was announced.