Jules did not hear her. When preoccupied, he had a habit of ignoring Madeleine. Yet, in his way, he liked her; he often wondered what he would do without her; she was docile and attentive to his wants as his mother had been, and she was very inexpensive. For five minutes he read; then, when he found no reference to the acrobat, he threw down the paper with an exclamation of impatience, and seized his cup and sipped his coffee. "It's cold!" he cried. Madeleine's look of distress deepened. "Let me take that away," she said. "I'll get another cup." When she brought the cup and poured some of the hot coffee into it, Jules drained it, and pushed his chair away from the table. "But you have eaten nothing, Monsieur Jules!" "I'm not hungry this morning." "And you didn't eat anything last night," the old woman repeated, following him with her eyes. "Are you sick?" "No, no!" Jules replied, impatiently. "I don't feel like eating, that's all. Give me my hat and coat, Madeleine; I shall be late if I don't hurry." "Monsieur Jules doesn't look well," said Madeleine timidly, as she helped him on with his coat. "Oh, don't worry about me." At the door Jules turned. "I shall be out late again to-night, Madeleine. You needn't leave the light burning." The wool-house of Ballou, Mercier & Co., where Jules worked, was only ten minutes' walk from the _rue de Lisbonne_. On his way there, Jules resolved to say nothing to the twins about Mademoiselle Blanche. Of course, Leroux would ask him about the evening, and he would say simply that he had been rather bored. He wanted to keep Mademoiselle Blanche to himself. He even hoped that her performance would not be noised abroad, that she would not become one of those women whom all Paris went to see and every one talked glibly about. But she must be well-known already; it was evidently her performance that had crowded the Circus. At the office the twins had a great deal to say about the masked ball of the previous night, but Jules hardly heard them. He was still so haunted by the thought of Mademoiselle Blanche that he made several mistakes in his letters; since his return from America he had been placed in charge of all the English correspondence, and it was important that he should be exact. The day had never seemed so long to him, nor his work, in which he usually took pride, so dull. He was impatient for the evening. When six o'clock came, he hurried away without bidding the twins good-night.