"That's just what I haven't been able to find out. I've been talking about her tonight with old Réju—he's the man who makes the engagements—but he didn't seem to know much more about her than I did. He said he first heard of her in Bucharest. She made a hit there, too, some time last year."
"But she's French, isn't she? Parisian?"
"She's French, but Réju says she isn't Parisian—comes from the provinces somewhere. There's a woman goes about with her, her mother, I suppose. Réju says mamma keeps her down here," the journalist added with a smile, making a significant gesture with his thumb. "Mamma gets all the money, and Mademoiselle does all the work."
Jules shrugged his shoulders. "Going to your office?" he said. "You have to turn night into day, haven't you?"
"My dear fellow, night is the best part of life. Days were made for sleep. We've got mixed up, that's all, and only a few of us are clever enough to find it out. Come and have a glass of absinthe with me before I go back."
Jules shook his head.
"Some other time. A glass of absinthe would spoil me for to-morrow. Au revoir."
He was glad to be alone again so that he might think over the evening. The beautiful figure whirling through the air still haunted him. "Mademoiselle Blanche!" The name seemed to sing in his mind. He wondered what her real name was. So she had a mother who kept her under her thumb! Then he wondered what she was like out of the circus—ignorant and vulgar, probably, like the rest of them. Yet in her looks she was certainly different from the rest. At any rate, he must go and see her performance again. He would go several times.