“No letter for ce cher Reginald?”
She shook her head. “I can write no more,” she whispered.
She closed her eyes. Presently she said, in a low voice:—
“Aristide—if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep.”
He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his neck and he kissed her on the lips.
“She is sleeping,” said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.
Aristide tiptoed out of the room.
And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the Rue Saint Honoré he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.
The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day’s work at the Hôtel du Soleil et de l’Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux, hands on broad hips.
“Tiens, mon petit,” she said, without preliminary greeting. “You are an angel. I knew it. But that a man’s an angel is no reason for his being an imbecile. Read this.”