"Yes, Sandy dear, I've just seen her."
"Well, what's up?"
"I've promised her never to see Little Billee any more. I was foolish enough to promise to marry him. I refused many times these last three months, and then he said he'd leave Paris and never come back, and so, like a fool, I gave way. I've offered to live with him and take care of him and be his servant—to be everything he wished but his wife! But he wouldn't hear of it. Dear, dear Little Billee! he's an angel—and I'll take precious good care no harm shall ever come to him through me! I shall leave this hateful place and go and live in the country: I suppose I must manage to get through life somehow. I know of some poor people who were once very fond of me, and I could live with them and help them and keep myself. The difficulty is about Jeannot. I thought it all out before it came to this. I was well prepared, you see."
She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight against her teeth, as if some one were pulling her back by the lobes of her ears.
"Oh! but Trilby—what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know! You've become one of us!"
"Now how good and kind of you to say that!" exclaimed poor Trilby, her eyes filling. "Why, that's just all I lived for, till all this happened. But it can't be any more now, can it? Everything is changed for me—the very sky seems different. Ah! Durien's little song—'Plaisir d'amour—chagrin d'amour!' it's all quite true, isn't it? I shall start immediately, and take Jeannot with me, I think."
"But where do you think of going?"
"Ah! I mayn't tell you that, Sandy dear—not for a long time! Think of all the trouble there'd be— Well, there's no time to be lost. I must take the bull by the horns."
She tried to laugh, and took him by his big side-whiskers and kissed him on the eyes and mouth, and her tears fell on his face.
Then, feeling unable to speak, she nodded farewell, and walked quickly up the narrow winding street. When she came to the first bend she turned round and waved her hand, and kissed it two or three times, and then disappeared.