air.

Below Therese, some tarts from the Latin Quarter were dancing in a ring
on a patch of worn turf singing an infantine roundelay. With hats fallen
on their shoulders, and hair unbound, they held one another by the
hands, playing like little children. They still managed to find a small
thread of fresh voice, and their pale countenances, ruffled by brutal
caresses, became tenderly coloured with virgin-like blushes, while their
great impure eyes filled with moisture. A few students, smoking clean
clay pipes, who were watching them as they turned round, greeted them
with ribald jests.

And beyond, on the Seine, on the hillocks, descended the serenity
of night, a sort of vague bluish mist, which bathed the trees in
transparent vapour.

"Heh! Waiter!" shouted Laurent, leaning over the banister, "what about
this dinner?"

Then, changing his mind, he turned to Camille and said:

"I say, Camille, let us go for a pull on the river before sitting down
to table. It will give them time to roast the fowl. We shall be bored to
death waiting an hour here."

"As you like," answered Camille carelessly. "But Therese is hungry."

"No, no, I can wait," hastened to say the young woman, at whom Laurent
was fixedly looking.