It was while watching Mademoiselle Blanche in the ring that he found it most difficult to realize his happiness. He actually _knew_ this wonderful creature in white tights who darted from trapeze to trapeze, who posed like a marble statue on the rope, who shot through the air like a thunderbolt! He saw her every day; he loved her, and she knew that he loved her. Sometimes he fancied that she loved him in return--from an expression in her face, a glance of her eyes, a blush, a tremor when his hand touched hers. He did not dare speak to her about his love; he doubted if he should ever dare to speak; at a word he feared his happiness might be shattered. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons he drove with Mademoiselle Blanche and her mother into the country, and on Sunday nights he would dine and pass the evening with them in the little apartment. Occasionally he had long talks with the mother; in these he told about his family and about his property, laying stress on the fact that even if he lost his place at the office his income was large enough to support him. She told him, in return, about her own family and her husband's, and gave him a humorous account of her sister-in-law, Blanche's Aunt Sophie. "Blanche is a little like her," she said. "Sophie takes everything _au grand sérieux_. Then she's strict with the children, and that's a great mistake, for Jeanne hates restraint, and Louise doesn't need it." She also told him amusing stories about Monsieur Berthier's devotion to her. He had offered himself to her while she was at the convent where she was educated, near Boulogne, and she had refused him twice. Her family had objected to her marriage with Blanche's father, simply because he was an acrobat. No, she hadn't fallen in love with him at the circus. She never saw him perform till a short time before she became engaged to him. Ah, it had been hard for her to be separated from him so much. Sometimes she travelled with him in his long journeys; but while the children were very young, she couldn't. Blanche had been such a consolation to him. Madame Perrault believed that husband and wife ought never to be separated; it was bad for both of them. If she had her life to live over again, she would always travel with her husband, no matter how far he went. Most of Jules' talk with Madame Perrault, however, consisted of a discussion of the qualities of her daughter, whose praises she constantly sang for him. Blanche's ambition, she said, was to provide dowries for her sisters; she had already accumulated a few thousand francs, and these she had set aside for the girls. She never seemed to think that she herself needed a _dot_. Ah, sometimes Madame was very much worried about her daughter's future. Blanche could not marry any of the other performers; they were not worthy of her, and their coarseness and roughness shocked her. Of course, they were good enough in their way, but their way was not Blanche's way.