After that night Blanche was so happy that she seemed like another creature from the thin, white-faced little woman of the past few weeks. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. Jules had been so different with her, she said to Mrs. Tate, since she had told him she would go on with the plunge. The night before he had taken her to the Hippodrome, and after the performance they had gone with Madeleine to a _café_; it reminded them of the days of their courtship in Paris. The two weeks that followed were the happiest Blanche had known since those first days after the birth of her child. Jules' devotion extended not only to her, but to little Jeanne and to Madeleine as well. For several days the gloom that had wrapped the city during most of the winter lifted; the sun shone, and the feeling of spring was in the air. In the afternoons Blanche took walks with Jules in the park, and on Sunday they went to mass together and then drove out to Richmond and dined there. They agreed to pretend that they were still in their days of courtship, and Jules delighted Blanche by repeating some of the foolish speeches he had made to her in the first weeks of their love. Then, too, they made great plans for the future. The negotiations with Hicks in New York had been broken off, but Jules had heard of an Australian manager who was in London looking for performers to appear during the following winter in Melbourne. How fine it would be if they could go out there and give performances in the chief Australian cities! Blanche, however, showed so little enthusiasm for this plan that Jules abandoned it for a time. Besides, he himself liked better the plan she suggested of returning to the _Cirque Parisien_. They might make an engagement there that would enable them to pass the winter in Paris. How good it would be to be back there again! Perhaps they could secure the little apartment in the _rue de Lisbonne_. Jules became so enthusiastic that he wrote to the manager in Paris, proposing terms. After a winter there they might think of going to Australia, where they would be much better paid than in Paris.