"Que diable fait-il?" she said in a frightened voice. "But M. Jacques, what can it mean?"
Again the ugly leer came over the garçon's face. "Sentiment," he said.
The middle-aged Breton woman pressed both hands to her heart with one of those wild and expressive Celtic gestures which seem so exaggerated to English folk, but which are, nevertheless, so truly expressive of emotion.
"Madame!" she cried.
"I was not thinking of madame," Jacques answered quickly.
As if clutching at a hope, Pauline made a tremendous effort to get in key with her tormentor.
"No, no!" she said with an affectation of brightness. "What? Is it that you were thinking of me? Merci!—that would be funny!"
"Sans doute. That's what they say in England when they advertise 'No followers.'"
The woman caught the last word. Her face had been strained in anxious thought.
"Followers!" she said. "Even the English do not expect followers from London to Paris."