"Mademoiselle, I caught sight of M. de Clagny just now when he arrived. He is an old gentleman, and as such can take liberties about certain matters which I, particularly in my position, could not." "As to you, you are just going to obey grandmamma like a good little boy, for it was grandmamma who sent me, you know." "Ah!" murmured the young man, disappointed, "it was your grandmamma? I was hoping it was you, who--but you are still vexed with me, of course?" "Vexed with you?" she asked, surprised; "what for?" "Well--because--oh, you know--the other evening--when, in spite of myself, I----" Bijou's merry face clouded over as she said very seriously: "I thought that would never be brought up again. I wish you to forget what you said to me." She stood still a moment, with a pensive look on her beautiful face, and then she added, in a muffled voice: "And, above all, I wish to forget it myself." Her eyelids were lowered, and her eyelashes were beating quickly against her pink cheeks throwing a strange shadow over her brilliant complexion. Giraud went up to her, anxious and excited, and in a stammering voice he asked: "Is it true what you have just said? Do you still remember that moment of madness? Can you think of it without anger?" "Yes," she answered, gazing full at him with her beautiful blue eyes, "I think of it without anger," and then, in such a low voice that he could scarcely hear it, she murmured, "and I _do_ think of it all the time!" Then, with a sudden change of expression, she began again hurriedly: "It is you who must forget now; you must forget at once--what I ought never to have said to you! Please forget it! Do as I ask you, for my sake!" "Forget? How do you think that I can forget? You know well enough that it is absolutely impossible!" "You must, though!" she persisted. "Yes, you must say to yourself that you--that we have had a dream--a very bright, happy dream,--one of those sort from which one wakes up happy, and, at the same time, troubled; a dream in which one has a vision of beautiful things, which disappear, and which we cannot possibly define. Have you never had such dreams? One cannot, no matter how much one tries, remember all about them; and yet--one likes them." Her voice, with its caressing intonation, completely unnerved the young man. He had taken his seat again mechanically at the table, and, without replying, he looked up at Bijou, his eyes full of tears. She came nearer, and said in a beseeching tone: "Ah! please don't, if you only knew how wretched it makes me--" and then she added abruptly: "and if it is any consolation to you--you can say to yourself that you are not the only one to suffer--for I do, too." "Is it really, really true?" he asked, bewildered with his happiness. Denyse did not answer. She had just noticed on the table a letter, which Giraud had been finishing when she entered the room.