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So her heart sang under his rose on her breast. Then two big mouse-coloured pigeons came whistling by and alighted on the terrace, where they bowed and strutted and bobbed and turned until Rue Barree laughed in delight, and looking up beheld Clifford before her. His hat was in his hand and his face was wreathed in a series of appealing smiles which would have touched the heart of a Bengal tiger.

For an instant Rue Barree frowned, then she looked curiously at Clifford, then when she saw the resemblance between his bows and the bobbing pigeons, in spite of herself, her lips parted in the most bewitching laugh. Was this Rue Barree? So changed, so changed that she did not know herself; but oh! that song in her heart which drowned all else, which trembled on her lips, struggling for utterance, which rippled forth in a laugh at nothing,–at a strutting pigeon,–and Mr. Clifford.

“And you think, because I return the salute of the students in the Quarter, that you may be received in particular as a friend? I do not know you, Monsieur, but vanity is man’s other name;–be content, Monsieur Vanity, I shall be punctilious–oh, most punctilious in returning your salute.”

“But I beg–I implore you to let me render you that homage which has so long–“

“Oh dear; I don’t care for homage.”

“Let me only be permitted to speak to you now and then,–occasionally–very occasionally.”

“And if you, why not another?”

“Not at all,–I will be discretion itself.”

“Discretion–why?”

Her eyes were very clear, and Clifford winced for a moment, but only for a moment. Then the devil of recklessness seizing him, he sat down and offered himself, soul and body, goods and chattels. And all the time he knew he was a fool and that infatuation is not love, and that each word he uttered bound him in honour from which there was no escape. And all the time Elliott was scowling down on the fountain plaza and savagely checking both bulldogs from their desire to rush to Clifford’s rescue,–for even they felt there was something wrong, as Elliott stormed within himself and growled maledictions.

When Clifford finished, he finished in a glow of excitement, but Rue Barree’s response was long in coming and his ardour cooled while the situation slowly assumed its just proportions. Then regret began to creep in, but he put that aside and broke out again in protestations. At the first word Rue Barree checked him.

“I thank you,” she said, speaking very gravely. “No man has ever before offered me marriage.” She turned and looked out over the city. After a while she spoke again. “You offer me a great deal. I am alone, I have nothing, I am nothing.” She turned again and looked at Paris, brilliant, fair, in the sunshine of a perfect day. He followed her eyes.

“Oh,” she murmured, “it is hard,–hard to work always–always alone with never a friend you can have in honour, and the love that is offered means the streets, the boulevard–when passion is dead. I know it,–we know it,–we others who have nothing,–have no one, and who give ourselves, unquestioning–when we love,–yes, unquestioning–heart and soul, knowing the end.”

She touched the rose at her breast. For a moment she seemed to forget him, then quietly–“I thank you, I am very grateful.” She opened the book and, plucking a petal from the rose, dropped it between the leaves. Then looking up she said gently, “I cannot accept.”

V

It took Clifford a month to entirely recover, although at the end of the first week he was pronounced convalescent by Elliott, who was an authority, and his convalescence was aided by the cordiality with which Rue Barree acknowledged his solemn salutes. Forty times a day he blessed Rue Barree for her refusal, and thanked his lucky stars, and at the same time, oh, wondrous heart of ours!–he suffered the tortures of the blighted.

Elliott was annoyed, partly by Clifford’s reticence, partly by the unexplainable thaw in the frigidity of Rue Barree. At their frequent encounters, when she, tripping along the rue de Seine, with music-roll and big straw hat would pass Clifford and his familiars steering an easterly course to the Cafe Vachette, and at the respectful uncovering of the band would colour and smile at Clifford, Elliott’s slumbering suspicions awoke. But he never found out anything, and finally gave it up as beyond his comprehension, merely qualifying Clifford as an idiot and reserving his opinion of Rue Barree. And all this time Selby was jealous. At first he refused to acknowledge it to himself, and cut the studio for a day in the country, but the woods and fields of course aggravated his case, and the brooks babbled of Rue Barree and the mowers calling to each other across the meadow ended in a quavering “Rue Bar-ree-e!” That day spent in the country made him angry for a week, and he worked sulkily at Julian’s, all the time tormented by a desire to know where Clifford was and what he might be doing. This culminated in an erratic stroll on Sunday which ended at the flower-market on the Pont au Change, began again, was gloomily extended to the morgue, and again ended at the marble bridge. It would never do, and Selby felt it, so he went to see Clifford, who was convalescing on mint juleps in his garden.