“Till to-morrow,” she said graciously as he stood there bowing, with the hat of eight reflections in his hand. The car, purring, was about to move off, but she signalled the driver with a vibratory gesture of both her long white hands, and then tore with them at the vivid bouquet at her waist. She leaned from the car and thrust a scarlet amaryllis into Ventrillon’s buttonhole. “It is my flower,” she said, “the guaranty of our bargain.”
As the car rolled silently from the curb into the traffic, he raised the lapel of his coat and gallantly pressed his lips to the flaming lily. He saw her smile with all her teeth and wave her hand.
“Undoubtedly,” he said to himself as he strolled leisurely on down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, “it is because I happened to be designed by nature to wear a hat of eight reflections.”
His recent success ran in his blood like champagne. The scarlet badge of it was brave in his buttonhole, and if he had been wearing his old black felt and strolling down the Boulevard St.-Michel, he would have sung. But such behaviour was not for the man he had become. Neither was the company at the Closerie des Lilas.
In the Champs-Élysées he passed his good old friend Sabrin, who was promenading Clo-clo on his arm. Clo-clo shook her golden ringlets and giggled.
“Regard me that, if you please!” she cried. “Ventrillon has become a bourgeois! Ventri in a hat of eight reflections!”
Ventrillon lifted the hat of eight reflections and bowed—with a grace, and hoped nobody saw him do it. Sabrin’s mild eyes deepened as if he had been a dog and Ventrillon had struck him, but Clo-clo gave a delighted little scream of amusement.
“I do not think,” reflected Ventrillon, his ears blazing as he walked on, “that I shall frequent the Closerie des Lilas any more.”
As that was the only place in Paris where might be found a friend to buy him a dinner, and the reason for his walking the long distance from the Étoile to the Rue Jacob was that he had not even the price of a Métro ticket, Ventrillon went to bed early that night, imploring sleep to quiet his hunger.