agreed to make this concession to her weakness.




X


This little episode coloured for Madame Dépine the whole dreary period
that remained. Life was never again so depressingly definite; though
curiously enough the "Princess" mistook for gloom her steady earthward
glance, as they sauntered about the sweltering city. With anxious
solicitude Madame Valière would direct her attention to sunsets, to
clouds, to the rising moon; but heaven had ceased to have attraction,
except as a place from which five-francs fell, and as soon as the
"Princess's" eye was off her, her own sought the ground again. But
this imaginary need of cheering up Madame Dépine kept Madame Valière
herself from collapsing. At last, when the first red leaves began
to litter the Gardens and cover up possible coins, the francs in the
stocking approached their century.

What a happy time was that! The privations were become second nature;
the weather was still fine. The morning Gardens were a glow of pink
and purple and dripping diamonds, and on some of the trees was the
delicate green of a second blossoming, like hope in the heart of age.
They could scarcely refrain from betraying their exultation to
the Hôtel des Tourterelles, from which they had concealed their
sufferings. But the polyglot population seething round its malodorous
stairs and tortuous corridors remained ignorant that anything was
passing in the life of these faded old creatures, and even on the