"Those women are such idiots when they meddle in politics," grumbled
between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate of Woman's Rights on all
matters of love. "And," he continued, soliloquising, "it is not as if
the girl had any large or decent dot; it is not as if she said, 'In
return for the sacrifice of your popularity, your prospects, your
opinions, I give you not only a devoted heart, but an excellent table and
a capital fire and plenty of pocket-money.' _Sacre bleu_! when I think of
that frozen salon, and possibly the leg of a mouse for dinner, and a
virtuous homily by way of grace, the prospect is not alluring; and the
girl herself is not so pretty as she was--grown very thin. _Sur mon ame_,
I think she asks too much--far more than she is worth. No, No; I had
better have accepted her dismissal. _Elle n'est pas digne de moi_."

Just as he arrived at that conclusion, Gustave Rameau felt the touch of a
light, a soft, a warm, yet a firm hand, on his aria. He turned, and
beheld the face of the woman whom, through so many dreary weeks, he had
sought to shun--the face of Julie Caumartin. Julie was not, as Savarin
had seen her, looking pinched and wan, with faded robes, nor, as when met
in the cafe by Lemercier, in the faded robes of a theatre. Julie never
looked more beautiful, more radiant, than she did now; and there was a
wonderful heartfelt fondness in her voice when she cried, "_Mon homme!
mon homme! seul homme au monde a mon coeur, Gustave, cheri adore_! I
have found thee-at last--at last!" Gustave gazed upon her, stupefied.
Involuntarily his eye glanced from the freshness of bloom in her face
which the intense cold of the atmosphere only seemed to heighten into
purer health, to her dress, which was new and handsome--black--he did
not know that it was mourning--the cloak trimmed with costly sables.
Certainly it was no mendicant for alms who thus reminded the shivering
Adonis of the claims of a pristine Venus. He stammered out her naive,
"Julie!"--and then he stopped.