"When did she tell you?"

"She didn't. I heard her telling mamma."

There was a silence. Then Mimi hid her face, and Jean could hear
sobbing.

"You might tell me!" Jean insisted. He was too absorbed by his own
curiosity, and too upset by the full realization of the fact that she
had kept something from him, to be touched by her tears.

"It's a secret," she muttered into the pillow.

"You might tell me!"

"Go away, Jeannot!" she burst out hysterically.

He gave an angry lunge against the bed.

"I tell you everything; and it's not fair. _C'est pas juste!_" he said
savagely, but there were tears in his voice too. He was a creature at
once sensitive and violent, passionately attached to Mimi.

He thudded back to his bed. But even before he had reached his bed Mimi
could hear him weeping.

She gradually stilled her own sobs, and after a time Jean's ceased. And
then she guessed that Jean had gone to sleep. But Mimi did not go to
sleep. She knew that chance, and Mr Coe, and that odious new servant,