"May I read it? I've been to Ovide's and read 'The Clock in the Sky.'"
"Yes? Well, if later we have the good, chance to find, in our vieux carré, we and our cotérie, and Ovide, some more stories, true romances, we'll maybe try again; but till then--ah, no."
Mrs. Chester touched the girl caressingly. "My dear, you will! Every house looks as if it could tell at least one, including that large house and garden just over the way."
"Ah," chanted Mlle. Yvonne, "how many time' Corinne and me, we want' to live there and furnizh, ourseff, that romanz'!"
The five rose. Mrs. Chester "would be delighted to have the three Chapdelaines call. I'm leaving the hotel, you know; I've taken a room next Geoffry's. But that's nearer you, is it not?"
"A li'l', yes," the sisters replied, but Aline's smiling silence said: "No, a little farther off."
The aunts thanked Mme. De l'Isle for bringing Mrs. Chester and kissed her cheeks. They walked beside her to the gate, led by Cupid with the key, and by Marie Madeleine crooking the end of her tail like a floor-walker's finger. Mrs. Chester and Aline came last. The sisters ventured out to the sidewalk to finish an apology for a significant fault in Marie Madeleine's figure, and Mrs. Chester and Aline found themselves alone.
"Au revoir," they said, clasping hands. Cupid, under a sudden inspiration, half-closed the gate, the pair stood an eloquent moment gazing eye to eye, and then----
What happened the mother told her son that evening as they sat alone on a moonlit veranda.
"Mother!"