She went on talking about it after Elise had gone. "It will be like something in a fairy tale, to have a little money falling regularly to us from the skies, as it were. What it will mean! Even Henri and Elise do not know. We shall be in a position to indulge in pleasures that sound fantastic now. For instance, if Jacques is out of sorts, I shall be able to pack him off to the country to get well. To-day he would not hear of such a thing--he would not touch our nest-egg if he were on his last legs. And the little one! What joy to buy Baby's clothes without dipping into that! To buy him perhaps a little fur coat out of money that poor Jacques has not had to whip his brains for. Won't he look sweet, the pet, dressed in dividends? I wish that _you_ could take some shares, Pierre. But I know." Then Jacques returned, seemingly deep in thought, and I said: "Come in and make yourself at home. Congratulations, my financial magnate!" "Hein?" he queried. "What? Oh, that! Yes. It had slipped my mind for the moment." He went over to his wife and kissed her tenderly. It appeared that he had been out for two or three hours, and he demanded, with deep anxiety, if the child still thrived. "Mais oui, goose. He sleeps in there," said Blanche. "The shares had slipped thy mind? Ah, but listen, thou dwellest overmuch on thy work--in the end thou wilt have a breakdown." "But no, but no, little woman. On the contrary, never have I felt more fit. I have just seen something that is positively inspiring," he announced. "I have seen a suggestion for a short story that is exquisite." "So?" We were all attention. "Quite by accident. I had been walking aimlessly, wandering without noting where I turned, when in the twilight I found myself in a long street of decay that struck a chill to my heart. The slatternly, forbidding houses had an air of hopelessness, of evil that made me shudder. I tried to classify the denizens, but well as I know Paris, I was baffled. I had the impression of entering a street of mysteries. It was as if, behind each of those morose, darkling windows, lowering upon me in their hundreds, there lurked gruesome things. Suddenly, on the foul ledge of a ground-floor window, dim with dirt, behind which some nameless stuff was looped, further to hide the secrets of the room, I saw blooming?--a pot of pansies! I cannot tell you how infinitely fresh its fairness looked in these surroundings, how divinely incongruous! I stood gazing at it a full minute, lost in conjecture. Who, in that sinister house, retained the sensibility to tend a pot of pansies? What message did it yield her? How did she come to be there? 'Mon Dieu,' I said, 'a story! A great story!' I was enraptured. When I reached a decent quarter, I sat down on a bench, and lit a cigarette, and prepared to welcome the delicious plot that I foresaw emerging from my reverie." "Tell it to us," we begged him. The fervour of Jacques' tones abated. They were flat when he replied.