Are glimpses caught now of another blonde head
By a youth who lives over the way?
Does _she_ repeat words that Lynette's lips have said--
And does _he_ say what _I_ used to say?'"

"What is the answer?" asked de Fronsac. "Is it a conundrum? In any case
it is a poor substitute for a half a column of prose in _La Voix_.
How on earth am I to arrive at the bottom of the page? If I am short in
my copy, I shall be short in my rent; if I am short in my rent, I shall
be put out of doors; if I am put out of doors, I shall die of exposure.
And much good it will do me that they erect a statue to me in the next
generation! Upon my word, I would stand a dinner--at the two-franc
place where you may eat all you can hold--if you could give me a
subject."

"It happens," said Pitou, "that I can give you a very strange one. As I
am going to a foreign land, I have been to the country to bid farewell
to my parents; I came across an extraordinary girl."

"One who disliked presents?" inquired de Fronsac.

"I am not jesting. She is a dancer in a travelling circus. The flare
and the drum wooed me one night, and I went in. As a circus, well, you
may imagine--a tent in a fair. My fauteuil was a plank, and the
orchestra surpassed the worst tortures of the Inquisition. And then,
after the decrepit horses, and a mangy lion, a girl came into the ring,
with the most marvellous eyes I have ever seen in a human face. They
are green eyes, with golden lights in them."

"Really?" murmured the poet. "I have never been loved by a girl who had