"'Go! Go! Urbain!' I whispered, trying to steel my heart against his youth and ardor, 'Go, I am like an old woman to thee, a mere child.' His answer was to put one trembling arm around my bare shoulders and gently lay his velvet cheek upon my breast. I felt myself melting, melting in a delicious languor. After all, why not? Where would the dear boy find a more devoted and delicate initiation into life.... Think into whose hands he might fall if I repulsed him! "He raised his face adoringly to mine, drew me down to his lips ... his young, firm lips ... sweet as the petals of a rose ... perfumed with youth. I closed my eyes...." The only break in the intense immobility of the reader was that occasionally she moistened her lips with her tongue, and once in a while she drew a long, sighing breath. CHAPTER XVII "There!" said Madame Garnier, scanning the chair-filled assembly-room from the back, "up there in the second row there are three seats. We can take two and hold one and perhaps after Danielle has played, she can come and sit by us." They were in plenty of time, long before the contest began, so that she gave herself the pleasure of walking slowly down the aisle, stopping wherever she saw a familiar face to exchange greetings and to say proudly, "Yes, Jean-Pierre is returned from America. Looking very well, isn't he? Yes, that's the style in America, neither beard nor mustache. But I think after a while he'll let his mustache grow again. I tell him he looks like a priest." But she did not think that he looked in the least like a priest. She thought him the most beautiful young man in the world, and she was so ecstatically happy to have him back again after the rending anguish of the two years' separation, that she forgave him all the anxiety he had caused them by that foolish infatuation of his. That was in the past now, she hoped. Perhaps he had outgrown his foolish idea, as they had hoped he might when they had sent him away. He had certainly said nothing about it in any of his letters. But even if he hadn't forgotten, if he but knew it, she was more than ready to yield the point to him, to yield anything that would end his alienation from her, that would bring him back to live in Bayonne. She had grown old during those two endless years. They had broken her resolution. He was too precious. She could deny him nothing. If he still wanted it, why, let him _have_ his little American girl, as soon as she was old enough to marry. She might be made over into a passable wife for Jean-Pierre. There was no doubt she was pretty and fine, with nice hands and feet; and she seemed gentle and quiet. Once get her away from those impossible parents, into a decent home...!