"Only," he cried, "I accept it as a loan."
"Heavens! but I didn't intend to pay, myself," she protested, well pleased with her victory. "If you think dinners are to be had only for pay you are not a Parisian yet."
"In that case, I accept."
"Meet me, then, at eleven o'clock, Place de la République, Citoyen Barabant."
"I shall be there an hour ahead!"
At the door of the next room she called, "Louison!" drumming quietly with her fingers. Receiving no answer, she entered. The bed was vacant, undisturbed. Without surprise, and with even a certain satisfaction at being freed from the company of her friend, she passed down and out into the streets on her way to the Marché des Fleurs.
As she went, with many an energetic toss of her head interspersed with pensive smiles, she turned over in her mind the impressions of her first encounter, with the confidence of the woman who at the first exchange of glances feels her power. He had shown his admiration without timidity, which would have been vexatious, or forwardness, which would have been unendurable. She liked his show of pride, and more that he had yielded before the temptation of her eyes. That tribute sent her straying into the thousand and one pleasurable paths with which her ardent imagination filled the future.
At the flower-markets her preoccupation was so evident that she was compelled to run the fire of banter. She bore the ordeal with equanimity, hurrying away with buoyant step and eyes alert, impatient for the morning to pass.
She passed along the boulevards, disposing of her cockades among regular customers, until at length she arrived at her destination, the Café Procopé. There, mounted on a chair, a short, roly-poly ragamuffin, with bloated, pouter cheeks and squinting, almond eyes, was reading the morning bulletins in such thunderous tones that one readily divined the crier of carriages, whose voice had been trained in the battle of street sounds.
Among those assembled at the tables, she directed her way to where a gruff, gaunt man, sunk in a capacious redingote, was heralding her approach with a look of welcome.