Come, let us at once prepare Yves' room. Chrysanthème, quite elated at
the prospect of having her big friend near her, sets to work with a
good will; moreover, the task is an easy one, we have only to slip
three or four paper panels in their grooves, to make at once a
separate room or compartment in the great box we live in. I had
thought that these panels were entirely white; but no! on each of them
is a group of two storks painted in gray tints in those inevitable
attitudes consecrated by Japanese art: one bearing aloft its proud
head and haughtily raising its leg, the other scratching itself. Oh
these storks! how sick one gets of them, at the end of a month spent
in Japan!

Yves is now in bed and sleeping under our roof.

Sleep has come to him sooner than to me to-night; for somehow I fancy
I had seen long glances exchanged between him and Chrysanthème.

I have left this little creature in his hands like a toy, and I begin
to fear lest I should have thrown some perturbation in his mind. I do
not trouble my head about this little Japanese girl. But Yves,--it
would be decidedly wrong on his part, and would greatly diminish my
faith in him.

We hear the rain falling on our old roof; the cicalas are mute; odors
of wet earth reach us from the gardens and the mountain. I feel
terribly dreary in this room to-night; the noise of the little pipe
irritates me more than usual, and as Chrysanthème crouches in front of
her smoking-box, I suddenly discover in her an air of low breeding, in
the very worst sense of the word.