Through the very act of sitting still, a deadly lassitude had crept into her limbs. She was thankful not to move, to say little, and to listen with half an ear to the vagabond's jeremiads. Anyhow, she was sure that Bertrand would no longer be waiting. He was ever impatient if he thought that she failed him in anything, and it was she who had appointed five o'clock for their meeting. Even now the church clock way above the porch was striking half-past six. And the asthmatic giant went glibly on. He had partially recovered his breath. "Aye!" he was saying, in response to her lament, "and of the mind, too. I had a comrade whose sweetheart was false to him while he was fighting for his country. Mother Théot gave him a potion which he administered to the faithless one, and she returned to him as full of ardour as ever before." "I have no faith in potions," the girl said, and shook her head sadly the while tears once more gathered in her eyes. "No more have I," the giant assented carelessly. "But if my sweetheart was false to me I know what I would do." This he said in so droll a fashion, and the whole idea of this ugly, ungainly creature having a sweetheart was so comical, that despite her will, the ghost of a smile crept round the young girl's sensitive mouth. "What would you do, citizen?" she queried gently. "Just take her away, out of the reach of temptation," he replied sententiously. "I should say, 'This must stop,' and 'You come away with me, ma mie!'" "Ah!" she retorted impulsively, "it is easy to talk. A man can do so much. What can a woman do?" She checked herself abruptly, ashamed of having said so much. What was this miserable caitiff to her that she should as much as hint at her troubles in his hearing? In these days of countless spies, of innumerable confidence tricks set to catch the unwary, it was more than foolhardy to speak of one's private affairs to any stranger, let alone to an out-at-elbows vagabond who was just the sort of refuse of humanity who would earn a precarious livelihood by the sale of information, true or false, wormed out of some innocent fellow-creature. Hardly, then, were the words out of her mouth than the girl repented of her folly, turned quick, frightened eyes on the abject creature beside her. But he appeared not to have heard. A wheezy cough came out of his bony chest. Nor did he meet her terrified gaze. "What did you say, citoyenne?" he muttered fretfully. "Are you dreaming? . . . or what? . . ." "Yes--yes!" she murmured vaguely, her heart still beating with that sudden fright. "I must have been dreaming. . . . But you . . . you are better----?" "Better? Perhaps," he replied, with a hoarse laugh. "I might even be able to crawl home." "Do you live very far?" she asked. "No. Just by the Rue de l'Anier."