But up above, just outside the mantle department, she was again seized with terror on perceiving a lantern twinkling in the darkness and moving forward. It was the patrol of two firemen, marking their passage on the faces of the indicators. She stood still for a moment failing to understand their business, and watched them passing from among the shawls to the furniture, and then on to the under-linen department, terrified the while by their strange manœuvres, by the grating of their keys and the closing of the iron doors which shut with a resounding clang. When they approached, she took refuge in the lace department, but suddenly heard herself called by name and thereupon ran off to the door conducting to the private stairs. She had recognised Deloche's voice. He slept in his department, on a little iron bedstead which he set up himself every evening; and he was not asleep yet, but with open eyes was rememorating aloud the pleasant hours he had spent that evening. "What! it's you, mademoiselle?" said Mouret, whom Denise despite all her manœuvring found before her on the staircase, a small pocket-candleholder in his hand. She stammered, and tried to explain that she had been to look for something. But he was not angry. He gazed at her with his paternal, and at the same time inquisitive, air. "You had permission to go to the theatre, then?" "Yes, sir." "And have you enjoyed yourself? What theatre did you go to?" "I have been in the country, sir." This made him laugh. Then laying a certain stress on his words, he added: "All alone?" "No, sir; with a lady friend," she replied, her cheeks burning, shocked as she was by the suspicion which his words implied. He said no more; but he was still looking at her in her simple black dress and bonnet trimmed with a strip of blue ribbon. Was this little savage going to turn out a pretty girl? She looked all the better for her day in the open air, quite charming indeed with her splendid hair waving over her forehead. And he, who during the last six months had treated her like a child, sometimes giving her advice, yielding to a desire to inform himself, to a wicked wish to know how a woman grew up and became lost in Paris, no longer laughed, but experienced a feeling of surprise and fear mingled with tenderness. No doubt it was a lover who was improving her like this. At this thought he felt as if pecked to the heart by a favourite bird, with which he had been playing. "Good night, sir," murmured Denise, continuing on her way without waiting. He did not answer, but remained watching her till she had disappeared. And then he entered his own apartments. CHAPTER VI.