"Why then did you thank you as if I were a stranger?"
"I did not know whether you cared to recognize me in the street."
"Are you crazy?"
"That is what you all used to call me."
"Where do you live now?"
"At No. 27. I have been to my mother, she lives at No. 8. And you?"
"Me? I am going to Gillette's to breakfast."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Come and breakfast with me."
"Thank you; suppose you breakfast with me."
"Just as you wish, I am glad to go, only I must take my kid home."
"Do you like kids?"
"This one was given to me. I take him everywhere, but he's not trained to follow me. See how pretty he it."
And drawing him to her, she showed me his little pink snout, and kissed it as she would a child's rosy lips. She told me then why she was seen no more among the artists. Some one did not wish her to go; he had not confidence in her, had hidden her at Neuilly after having made her leave her work. She lived on her income, spent her days in reading, practicing her music, walking out and playing piquet with her mother. She showed me her apartment on the ground floor with a garden at the back, the plants all nibbled by the kid that she would not shut up.
Three rooms composed her apartment; two were furnished, the parlor bare awaiting the generosity of the somebody who seemed to be in no hurry to furnish it. He was rich, but not extravagantly lavish; prodigality was not among his viees. His family lived at Sevres, his business lived in Paris, he had found a halfway house at Neuilly convenient when he went
