"I know now why you were glad to give it back. It was because she cried."
"Yes; it was because she cried."
"Venire St. Gris!" exclaimed the marquis, who was pleased to swear like Henry of Navarre. "You are a poor devil for a thief. You have temptations to be good. I never have them myself. I thank Heaven I have reasonably well used my opportunities to be agreeably wicked."
"Father!" said the young woman, reproachfully; and then to François: "If you are a thief, still I thank you; I cannot tell you how much I thank you."
"And how many louis do you expect, most magnanimous of thieves?" said the marquis.
The woman looked up again. "Come to me to-morrow; I will find a way to help you."
Something of yearning, some sense of a void, some complexity of novel distress, arose in the thief's mind.
"Mon Dieu! madame," he said, turning toward her, without replying to the marquis, "you are a saint. I—I will think. I am not fit for such as you to talk to."
"Quite true," said the marquis. "Hast thou thy purse, Renée? I forgot mine."
"No, no," she said. "Come and see us—Rue des Petits-Augustines—a great house with a gilded gate. You will come? I will say they are to let you in. Promise me that you will come."