The girl grew as red as a cherry under her powder, even her graceful,
childish shoulders turned pink, enhancing her blonde and childlike
beauty.

Vaudrey was conscious of a strange and subtle charm in this intoxicating
circle,--a charm full of temptations which made him secretly uneasy.
There passed before his eyes visions of other days, he beheld the
phantoms of gay dresses, the apparitions of spring landscapes, he felt
the breezes of youth, laden with the scents of the upspringing grass,
the lilacs at Meudon, the violets of Ville-d'Avray, the souvenirs of the
escapades of his student days. Their short, full skirts reminded him of
white frocks that whisked gayly around the hazel-trees long ago, those
ballet-girls bore a striking resemblance to the pink and white grisettes
that he had flirted with when he was twenty.

He extended his hand in turn towards the sheet of paper to which Molina
had just signed his name, saying to Marie Launay as he did so:

"Let me have it, if you please, mademoiselle."

Granet began to laugh.

"Ah! ah!" he cried, "you are really going to write down under Monsieur
Gigonnet's signature the name of the Minister of the Interior?"

"Oh! bless me!" said Vaudrey, laughing, "that is true! You will believe
it or not as you please, but I quite forgot that I was a minister."

"It was the same with me when I was decorated," said Molina. "I would