"Yes."
"I am sorry."
She said it in such a gentle tone, sighing slightly, that Barabant's anger held no longer; still, as a measure of policy, he kept silent.
Goursac, preparing to wheel into a side street, called back, with a laugh of which only Nicole could guess the cost:
"Good-by, my children; I leave you in peace. Love-making is disconcerting to the older generation. Reconcile yourselves quickly."
Barabant and Nicole, thus left to themselves, continued arm in arm silently homeward, avoiding the thronged thoroughfares, the noise and the lights, plunging by preference down quiet ways where only an occasional window reddened the sides of the night. Barabant struggled to maintain his just anger; Nicole, who had yielded to an impulse in accosting him, searched for some means to regain the ground which she felt she had surrendered.
"You don't answer," she said at last, withdrawing her arm half-way. "You want me to go?"
He freed himself brusquely and faced her with the angry cry:
"Coquette!"