Javogues fell back into a chair, repeating: "Extraordinary! I don't understand." She threw herself into his arms with the movement of a child, and, without seeking to conceal her thoughts, repeated a hundred caresses while he continued to mumble stupidly: "Extraordinary! Extraordinary!" Finally her emotion penetrated him. He took her in his hands and held her from him, she coloring with pleasure at this show of force, which came to her as a caress. Suddenly a tremor ran through his immense body, an upheaval out of which came something gentle and softened. He continued to hold her before him, without shifting the glance that plunged into her eyes, while the girl, turning in his grasp, repeated, "Let me go!" for, child that she was, she divined what was passing in him. "But why," he repeated stupidly--"why do you love me? I don't understand. No other woman ever has." "Because you are so heroic. All the others understand nothing of poverty and sorrow. You--you understand. You give hope to such as I. When I hear you speak those sublime thoughts, my heart swells. You too have suffered; you know the abyss." She added, not without elation: "I loved you from the first day. I never thought you'd notice me." "It's true--really true, then--what you say to me?" For all answer she looked at him and smiled. "It's curious. I don't understand it," he said at last. "But I believe I'm beginning to love you." Then, without quite knowing why, she lowered her eyes. IV SIMON LAJOIE The inhabitants of the Rue Maugout, astounded by the sight of Geneviève arm in arm with the overshadowing Javogues, had not recovered from the shock of this evidence of human feeling in their tyrant when the next day brought them a further surprise. Toward five in the afternoon Dossonville, with the evident purpose of impressing his enemies by a new accession of strength, made his appearance, with a body-guard of two. The onlookers, enjoying the amazement of the Marseillais, were yet themselves astonished and perplexed at the incongruity of the new reinforcement. One, short and contracted, gave the impression that by some mysterious settling his head had shrunk on his shoulders, his shoulders had moved toward his waist, and by this gradual process his whole body had been telescoped into his legs. A huge, flattened nose, or rather beak, imposed itself upon the yellowish, parched face and empty cheeks, while from two slits under the overhanging brows, the half-hidden eyes, without deviating from their forward direction, absorbed the outer world. His companion, in contrast to the dragging gait of his fellow, moved in short steps, picking up his feet. The sharp nose, set as close as is possible to the perpendicular, pointed the way to the head, which, set forward on the craning neck, seemed in turn to be running ahead of the frail body.