If the cremery had seemed lonely by gaslight, what must Ralph Flare have said of it next morning, as he sat in his old place and watched the ouvriers at breakfast? They came in, one by one, with their baton of brown bread, and called for two sous' worth of coffee and milk. The men wore blouses of blue and white, and jested after the Gallic code with the sewing-girls. This bread and coffee, and a pear which they should eat at noon, would give them strength to labor till nightfall brought its frugal repast. Yet they were happy as crickets, and a great deal more noisy.
Here is little Suzette, smiling and skipping, and driving her glances straight into Ralph Flare's heart.
"Good-day, sir," she cries, and takes a chair close by him, after the manner of a sparrow alighting. She smooths back her pure wristbands, disclosing the grace of the arm, and as she laughs in Ralph's face he knows what she is saying to herself; it is more doubtful that he loves her than that she knows it.
"Peut-être, monsieur, vous-avez besoin des gants?"
She gave him the card of her boutique, and laughed like a sunbeam playing on a rivulet, and went out singing like the witch that she was.
"I don't want gloves," said Ralph Flare; "I won't go to her shop."
But he asked Père George the direction, notwithstanding; and though his conscience seemed to be blocking up the way—a tangible, visible, provoking conscience—he put his feet upon it and shut his lips, and found the place.
Ralph Flare has often remarked since—for he is quite an artist now—that of all scenes in art or nature that boutique was to him the rarest. He has tried to put it into color—the miniature counter, the show-case, the background of boxes, each with a button looking mischievously at him, or a glove shaking its forefinger, or a shapely pair of hose making him blush, and the daintiest child in the world, flushing and flirting and gossiping before him; but the sketch recalls matters which he would forget, his hands lose command, something makes his eye very dim, and he lays aside his implements, and takes a long walk, and wears a sober face all that day.
We may all follow up the sequence of a young man's thoughts in doing a strange wrong for the first time. If Ralph's passions of themselves could not mislead him, there were not lacking arguments and advisers to teach him that this was no offence, or that the usage warranted the sin. He became acquainted, through Terrapin, with dozens of his countrymen; the youngest and the oldest and the most estimable had their open attachments. So far as he could remark, the married and the unmarried tradesmen's wives in Paris were nearly equal in consideration. How could he become perfect in the language without some such incentive and associate?
His income was not considerable, but they told him that to double his expenses was certain economy. He was very lonely, and he loved company. His age was that at which the affections and the instincts alike impel the man to know more of woman—the processes of her mind, her capacities, her emotions, the idiosyncrasies which divided her from his own sex.