"What did you mean by your question?" Muriel took some time to reply: "What question?" "You know: the only one you asked--about--about children not being wanted?" This time Muriel's answer was swift: she took her husband's broad shoulders in her arms and, as they rolled down the boulevard, began sobbing. "I never want to see him again!" she vowed. "Never bring him to the hotel. I won't be at home if he comes. I won't see him. I won't!" She suggested changing their hotel. She declared that, even if they did change, she could not sleep that night. She begged him to take her somewhere to amuse her and get her thoughts away from the dreadful Boussingault. It was Stainton who proposed that they should see Montmartre--which term, when used by the travelling American, means to see two or three places in Montmartre conducted largely for Americans, which charge in strict accord with the French ideas of the average American's pocketbook, and are visible only between the hours of ten o'clock at night and four o'clock in the morning. "Very well," said Jim; "we might go to Montmartre. I think we ought to see Montmartre." "What's that?" asked Muriel. "It's--oh, it's a part of Paris. You'll know when we get there." "I don't remember hearing of it in our French course." "I don't think it's included in the French course of a convent. I hope not." "Why not?" "For the very reason that we ought to go see it--now." He was quite sure that he was sincere in his attitude. They were sightseers, and he had always been told that Montmartre was one of the sights of Paris. They had seen everything else. They had seen Notre Dame, the Sainte Chapelle, the markets, the Palais de Justice, the Chambre des Deputes, the tomb of Napoleon--everything. They had enjoyed the Jardins des Tuileries and the pictures and sculpture of the Luxembourg Museum, and they had walked through the weary miles of painted canvases in the Louvre, where Muriel lingered before the spot at which the Mona Lisa had long hung. They had even permitted themselves the horrors of the Morgue. Why should Stainton not complete his knowledge of Paris, and why should he not, like most other Americans, take his wife, however young she was, to Montmartre with him? Jim had once said to Holt that he had, all his life long, kept himself clean. The curiosities of his youth had remained unsatisfied.