You must understand that she had one pertinacious adversary in her efforts to wean him of his vice. Not an avowed adversary, for he professed the most earnest wish that she might be successful; but an adversary who was eternally putting spokes in her wheel, all the same. Yes, Monsieur Edouard himself. Never content with the short rations to which she had condemned him, he was perpetually on the watch for a chance to elude her vigilance; she was perpetually discovering that he had somehow contrived to lay in secret supplies. And every now and again, openly defying her authority, he would go off for a grand debauch. Then her task of reducing his daily portion to a minimum must needs be begun anew. Well, when the spring came, and the Salon opened, where his picture (her picture?) had been received and very fairly hung, they went together to the Vernissage. And there he met a whole flock of English folk—artists and critics, who had “just run over for the show, you know”—with whom he was acquainted; and they insisted on carrying him away with them to lunch at the Ambassadeurs. I, too, had assisted at the Vernissage; and when I left it, I found P’tit-Bleu seated alone under the trees in the Champs-Elysées. She had on a brilliant spring toilette, with a hat and a sunshade.... Oh, my dear! It is not to be denied that P’tit-Bleu had the courage of her tastes. But her face was pale, and her lips were drawn down, and her eyes looked strained and anxious. “What’s the row?” I asked. And she told me how she had been abandoned—“plantée là” was her expression—and of course I invited her to lunch with me. But she scarcely relished the repast. “Pourvu qu’il ne fasse pas de bêtises!” was her refrain. She returned rather early to the Rue Monsieur le Prince, to see if he had come home; but he hadn’t. Nor did he come home that night, nor the next day, nor the next. At the week’s end, though, he came: dirty, haggard, tremulous, with red eyes, and nude—yes, nude—of everything save his shirt and trousers! He had borrowed a sovereign from one of his London friends, and when that was gone, he had pledged or sold everything but his shirt and trousers—hat, boots, coat, everything. It was an equally haggard and red-eyed P’tit-Bleu who faced him on his reappearance. And I’ve no doubt she gave him a specimen of her eloquence. “You figure to yourself that this sort of thing amuses me, hein? Here are six good days and nights that I haven’t been able to sleep or rest.”