"Every day I have longed to be back with you, and at last I could bear no more. Do you think you might forgive me if you tried?"
"There is a tear on your cheek, and your dear little nose is pink with the cold, and the snow has taken your feathers out of curl," he answered, laughing and crying. "Let us pretend there are logs blazing up the chimney, and we will draw one chair to the hearth and tell each other how miserable we have been—or better than that, how happy we are!"
But still she clung to him, shivering and condemning herself.
"And so," she repeated, "I ran away. It is a habit I am acquiring. Finot is furious; he has dismissed me; I have no job and no money. I have come back with nothing, my Floromond, but the clothes I stand up in. And—and why do I find you with an empty coal-scuttle?"
"Ma foi!" he stammered, loath to deepen her distress, "as usual, that imbecile of a charbonnier has neglected to fulfil the order."
"He becomes intolerable," she faltered. "Is that why I notice that your tobacco-pouch is empty, too?"
"Oh, as for the tobacco-pouch," said the young man, "in this ferocious weather I have been reluctant to put on my hat."
"It is natural," murmured Frisonnette. But her eyes were frightened, and she investigated the cupboard. And when the cupboard was discovered to be as empty as the pouch and the coal-scuttle, she rushed to him in a panic.
"You are starving!" she moaned. "You have starved here, while I——Mon Dieu, I have not come home too soon!"
"Tut, tut," said Floromond; "are you trying to pose me for a hero of romance? I have been an idle vagabond, that is all. The cat is out of the bag, though—you have come home, ma Frisonnette adorée, and I have nothing for your welcome but my embrace!" And thinking of the want that lay before her, he broke down.