"Yes, I live here now, right up at the top; but it is very pleasant; and then it is a very decent house. I have a little corner of the courtyard where I keep my flowers, near a pump; it is always cool there.—Good-night, Georget."
"What! are we going to part already?"
"You know very well that you can't come up to my room, Georget, you who are my sweetheart; that wouldn't be proper."
"Oh! I have no idea of asking you to let me do that, Violette; but suppose, after you have put your flowers in the yard, you would take a little walk with me on the boulevard; we have been together such a short time."
"All right, I will do it; but we mustn't walk long."
"A few minutes, that's all."
Violette went in to arrange her tray and her flowers; then she returned to Georget, passed her arm through his, and they walked away, talking together, looking at each other, pressing against each other, happier than the great ones of the earth, happier than the millionaires, happier than all those whom people envy; for true love and youth!—you would seek in vain to find anything superior to these.
Meanwhile the evening advanced, and the two lovers, who had not begun to weary of looking at each other, of squeezing each other's hands and of repeating that they would love each other forever, could not make up their minds to part. When Violette said: "I must go in," Georget replied: "Just a minute more." When he expressed a fear that she was cold, she reassured him by saying that the walk would do her good.
But Chicotin, who was not in love and who was dying of hunger, waited in vain for his friend to join him at the place he had appointed. Weary of waiting, Chicotin went to the flower market, but found no one there. Then he went to Violette's abode, and asked the concierge if the young flower girl had come home; and Madame Lamort informed him that, after putting her flowers in their place, she had gone out on the arm of a very young and comely man, saying that she would soon return.
Chicotin sat down on a carriage stone, muttering: