according to our agreement, I had given her the evening before. With
the competent dexterity of an old money-changer she fingers them,
turns them over, throws them on the floor, and armed with a little
mallet _ad hoc,_ rings them vigorously against her ear, singing the
while I know not what little pensive bird-like song which I daresay
she improvises as she goes along.

Well, after all, it is even more completely Japanese than I could
possibly have imagined it--this last scene of my married life! I feel
inclined to laugh. How simple I have been, to allow myself to be taken
in by the few clever words she whispered yesterday, as she walked
beside me, by a tolerably pretty little phrase embellished as it was
by the silence of two o'clock in the morning, and all the wonderful
enchantments of night.

Ah! not more for Yves than for me, not more for me than for Yves, has
any feeling passed through that little brain, that little heart.

When I have looked at her long enough, I call:--

"Hi! Chrysanthème!"

She turns confused, and reddening even to her ears at having been
caught at this work.

She is quite wrong, however, to be so much troubled, for I am, on the
contrary, delighted. The fear that I might be leaving her in some
sadness had almost given me a pang, and I infinitely prefer that this
marriage should end as it had begun, in a joke.