The next night, when Jules appeared in the _rue St. Honoré_ for dinner, he found the little apartment crowded. Madame Perrault embraced him, and by addressing him as "my son," seemed to receive him formally into the family. Then she introduced the two girls, who were much larger than he had imagined them to be. Jeanne, rosy-cheeked and black-eyed, approached him fearlessly, and offered her hand with a smile; Louise, fair and slight, with her light brown hair braided down her back, looked frightened, and blushed furiously when she received her salutation. The little fat man standing in front of the mantel, Jules recognized at once from his pointed white beard and laughing eyes. "I should have known you in a crowd on the _Boulevard_," Jules said, as he extended his hand. "You're exactly like your photograph." "And you are even better-looking than Mathilde said you were," Monsieur Berthier replied. "Ah, little one," he went on, turning to Blanche, and giving her a pinch on the arm, "you're getting a fine, handsome husband." Jules tried to make friends with the girls. With Jeanne he had no difficulty; she was quite ready to banter with him, and he found her pert and quick-witted. Louise, however, was so shy that he could extract only monosyllables from her. She seemed to him very like Blanche, only less pretty. Jeanne had Blanche's beauty, more highly-colored and exuberant; her snapping black eyes showed, too, that she had a will and a temper of her own. Jules began to chaff her, to make her show her spirit, but she parried his jests good-humoredly, and she retaliated very smartly. "I don't see how you ever dared to fall in love with Blanche," she said. "Aren't you afraid of her?" "Afraid of her?" Jules laughed. "Why should I be afraid of her?" "Oh, I don't know. I suppose because she's so good. I'm afraid of her sometimes. And I'm afraid of Louise when she gets her pious look on. How did you happen to fall in love with her? Do tell me. I'll never tell in the world." "I just saw her, that's all," Jules explained with mock gravity. "Isn't that enough?" "In the circus?" Jules nodded. "Then you fell in love with her because she does such wonderful things, and looks so beautiful in the ring. Now, you wouldn't have fallen in love if you'd just met her like any one else." "But it was because she wasn't like anyone else that I did fall in love with her," Jules insisted, with the air of carrying on the joke. "But if she'd never been in the circus--if you'd just met her here, or anywhere else except in the circus--do you think you would have fallen in love with her then?" "Of course I should," Jules replied unhesitatingly, though he knew he was lying. Jeanne shrugged her shoulders and looked skeptical. "I wish I could be in the circus," she said, "and get flowers, and be admired, and earn a lot of money like Blanche. And isn't it the funniest thing," she went on, growing more confidential, "Blanche doesn't care about it at all."