“Julie!” cried madame sharply. “You foolish girl, what do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Julie slowly, “that I am going to marry Roger.”
“You shan’t do it!” declared madame. By this time again the café was on the verge of uproar. “You are to marry James Stuart, who is a man of moral sense, a good man who——”
Just here, James Stuart came in—in evening dress, very debonair and with the smile. “Er—how de do?” he said feebly—seeing Roger.
Then some one saw him—and darted forward. “C’est lui, c’est lui,” screamed Suzette, seizing him with an impish laugh—“that one who was with me at the Olympia last night—with whom I did the tour of Montmartre. La! la! ces anglais!” And the minx kissed Chames Stuart loudly on both cheeks—before the outraged eyes of madame.
As for Roger Elmont—he looked steadily at madame.
Madame had shrunk back—for an instant crushed. Then she regained confidence, caught the girl’s hand. “Come,” she said in a voice choking with emotion, “come, Julie! Let us go, quickly—let us get out of this mire—this mud of Paris, where nothing seems to be clean or good. Come!”
But the girl—with a new gleam in her blue eyes—turned and gave her hand to Roger. “I think,” she said to her mother in a clear voice, “it is not the mud that counts, but the way one comes out of it.”
“And did you perceive, m’sieu,” chuckled Marcel—when later I was drinking their health in a fine champagne—“did you see that Chames Stuart had, fault of the wet evening, mud on his boots? Chames Stuart—that ‘good man,’ eh nom d’un pipe! These Americans—pardon, m’sieu!”
THE END