"It will take a long time! it will take much longer than I thought! However, I shall certainly gain my end; for if the girl hadn't found me to her liking, she wouldn't have consented to receive my visits, she wouldn't go out with me and accept presents from me. She plays the cruel, to give greater value to her conquest. That is coquetry, yes, immodesty--but it can't last forever." Mademoiselle Georgette did, in fact, accept Dupont's escort readily enough to the play, to concerts, and to go out to walk. As for balls, Dupont did not offer to take her to any, nor did she seem to desire it. One thing she had always refused: that was, to dine in a private dining-room at a restaurant. "I am willing to dine with you at a restaurant," she said; "but we will dine in the main dining-room, with other people." In vain did Dupont say: "The service isn't so good in the main dining-room; and then, too, it's bad form--ladies who dine at restaurants never go to the public room." Georgette was inflexible; she would not give way. As a general rule, she seemed to go with Dupont, not for the pleasure of being with him, but to see the people and to be seen herself. She dressed very modestly. Dupont had said to himself: "The way to capture a woman is by giving her things to wear, by encouraging her coquetry;" and he had sent the young embroiderer a pretty shawl, a silk dress, and a stylish bonnet. She had accepted his gifts without argument, and had arrayed herself in them that same day to go to the Opéra-Comique with him. But when, after escorting her home at the close of the performance, he had asked permission to go up to her room for a moment, she had shut the door in his face, saying: "I should think not! it's quite enough to receive you in the daytime." Mademoiselle Georgette made frequent conquests when she was on Dupont's arm; then our provincial became jealous, for it seemed to him that his companion was distraught at times, and that she paid too much attention to the men who ogled her, and not enough to him. Then, too, the young woman was very curious; at the play, she would call his attention to a stylishly dressed young dandy and say: "Do you know the gentleman in that box, just opposite us, with an opera glass in his hand?" "No; I haven't an idea who he is," Dupont would reply sourly; "I don't know anyone in Paris." "Ah! to be sure; I forgot that you had just come from America. It's a pity!" "Why is it a pity?" "Because you don't know anyone in Paris." "And even if I did know the young man you refer to, how would that help you?" "Oh! not at all. I simply wanted to know." Another time, it was a middle-aged man, but dressed in the height of fashion, and mimicking all the manners of a young dandy, whom Mademoiselle Georgette noticed on one of the public promenades and pointed out to her faithful attendant. "Do you know who that man is?" "How in the devil do you suppose that I know who he is?"