hands, and in refusing to take it back, had wished to give him a mark of interest; for otherwise this refusal and this silence could only have been marks of contempt, and such a supposition was not possible.  Croisilles, therefore, judged that Mademoiselle Godeau’s heart was of a softer grain than her father’s and he remembered distinctly that the young lady’s face, when she crossed the drawing-room, had expressed an emotion the more true that it seemed involuntary.  But was this emotion one of love, or only of sympathy?  Or was it perhaps something of still less importance,—­mere commonplace pity?  Had Mademoiselle Godeau feared to see him die—­him, Croisilles—­or merely to be the cause of the death of a man, no matter what man?  Although withered and almost leafless, the bouquet still retained so exquisite an odor and so brave a look, that in breathing it and looking at it, Croisilles could not help hoping.  It was a thin garland of roses round a bunch of violets.  What mysterious depths of sentiment an Oriental might have read in these flowers, by interpreting their language!  But after all, he need not be an Oriental in this case.  The flowers which fall from the breast of a pretty woman, in Europe, as in the East, are never mute; were they but to tell what they have seen while reposing in that lovely bosom, it would be enough for a lover, and this, in fact, they do.  Perfumes have more than one resemblance to love, and there are even people who think love to be but a sort of perfume; it is true the flowers which exhale it are the most beautiful in creation.

While Croisilles mused thus, paying very little attention to the tragedy that was being acted at the time, Mademoiselle Godeau herself appeared in a box opposite.

The idea did not occur to the young man that, if she should notice him, she might think it very strange to find the would-be suicide there after what had transpired in the morning.  He, on the contrary, bent all his efforts towards getting nearer to her; but he could not succeed.  A fifth-rate actress from Paris had come to play Merope, and the crowd was so dense that one could not move.  For lack of anything better, Croisilles had to content himself with fixing his gaze upon his lady-love, not lifting his eyes from her for a moment.  He noticed that she seemed pre-occupied and moody, and that she spoke to every one with a sort of repugnance.  Her box was surrounded, as may be imagined, by all the fops of the neighborhood, each of whom passed several times before her in the gallery, totally unable to enter the box, of which her father filled more than three-fourths.  Croisilles noticed further that she was not using her opera-glasses, nor was she listening to the play.  Her elbows resting on the balustrade, her chin in her hand, with her far-away look, she seemed, in all her sumptuous apparel, like some statue of Venus disguised en marquise.  The display of her dress and her hair, her rouge, beneath which one could guess her