"I've taken a lodging in the Rue Jean Paul."
"No," she insisted. "You mus' take no more chances on dis side of de river jus' now—nor mus' I."
"You mean that they suspect——?"
"Not yet—but dey will if dey see us—you and I——"
"You can't run that chance, Piquette."
"We are quite safe in de Boulevard Clichy. Come."
And so he yielded to her persuasions and followed her by a roundabout way across the Pont Carrousel and so toward their destination, while he told her in general terms of the events of the evening. She listened, putting in an exclamation or a brief question here and there, but made no comments until they reached her apartment, where she made him comfortable in her best chair, gave him a cigarette and getting out of her street dress, slipped into her dressing gown. To the western mind, unused to the casual ways of the atelier, this informality might have seemed indecorous. But Jim Horton was deeply absorbed in his own thoughts and for the moment did not think of her. And when she drew her robe around her and took up a cigarette, she seemed for the first time to be aware of his abstraction. To Piquette's mind those things which were natural to her must be natural to every one else, and this, after all, is only the simple philosophy of the child. As she curled herself up on her chaise longue and lighted her cigarette he smiled at her.
"Well, mon Jeem*," she said, "what you t'ink of Monsieur Quinlevin?" (She pronounced it Canl'van.)
"He's just about the smoothest proposition that ever happened," he replied. "He'd have gotten me, if I hadn't moved in close."
"An' 'Arry——? 'E did not'ing?"