"And who is your generous benefactor?" I asked, replacing the cushion in her lap. "Don't you know?" she asked in turn, opening her eyes wide with surprise. "I thought he would have been sure to tell you. Why, it was that good Monsieur Grellois, to be sure! He gave some money to the sister to buy it for me." Kind Eugene! He had very little money to live upon, and must, I know, have economised considerably in order to purchase this gift for his little patient. Still I was not jealous of his bounty, since for many days past I had been greatly occupied with Noemi's future welfare, and had busied myself in secret with certain schemes and arrangements the issue of which it remained only to announce. "So," said I, taking a chair beside her, "you are going to earn your living again by making lace?" "To try," she answered with a sad emphasis. "Lace-making does not pay well, then?" "Oh no, monsieur! It cannot be done quickly, you see,--only a little piece like this every day, working one's best,--and so much lace is made by machines now!" "But it cannot cost you much to live, Noemi?" "The eating and drinking is not much, monsieur; it is the rent; and all the cheap lodgings are so dirty! It is that which is the most terrible. I can't bear to have ugly things about me and hideous faces,--like Maman Paquet's!" She had the poet's instincts, this little Alsatian peasant. Most girls in her case would have cared little for the unlovely surroundings, so long as food and drink were plentiful. "But supposing you had a nice room of your own, clean and comfortable, with an iron bedstead like this one here, and chairs and a table, and two windows looking out over the Luxembourg gardens,--and nothing to pay." "Ah, monsieur!" She dropped her pillow, and fixed her great brown eyes earnestly on my face. "It is impossible," pursued I, reddening under her gaze, "for you to return to the horrible quartier in which Maman Paquet lives. It is not fit for a young girl; you would grow wicked and base like the people who live there,--or else you would die,--and I think you would die, Noemi." "But I have no money, monsieur." If you have no money, you have friends; a friend has given you your new pillow, you know, and another friend, perhaps, may give you a room to live in." Her eyelids drooped, her color came and went quickly, I detected beneath her bodice the convulsive movement of her heart. The agitation she betrayed communicated itself to me; I rose from my chair and leaned against the window-sill, so that my face might be no longer on a level with her eyes. "I understand you, monsieur!" she cried, and immediately burst into tears.