Jean had never seen a gilt girdle, but he thought in a vague way he would very much like to have one.

The holidays came, and one Thursday after breakfast his aunt produced a white waistcoat from the wardrobe, and Jean, dressed in his Sunday best, climbed on an omnibus which took him to the Rue de Rivoli.  He mounted four flights of a staircase, the carpet and polished brass stair-rods of which filled him with surprise and admiration.

On reaching the landing, he could hear the tinkling of a piano.  He rang the bell, blushed hotly and was sorry he had rung.  He would have given worlds to run away.  A maid-servant opened the door, and behind her stood Edgar Ewans, wearing a brown holland suit, in which he looked entirely at his ease.

“Come along,” he cried, and dragged him into a drawing-room, into which the half-drawn curtains admitted shafts of sunlight that were flashed back in countless broken reflections from mirrors and gilt cornices.  A sweet, stimulating perfume hung about the room, which was crowded with a superabundance of padded chairs and couches and piles of cushions.

In the half-light jean beheld a lady so different from all he had ever set eyes on till that moment that he could form no notion of what she was, no idea of her beauty or her age.  Never had he seen eyes that flashed so vividly in a face of such pale fairness, or lips so red, smiling with such an unvarying almost tired-looking smile.  She was sitting at a piano, idly strumming on the keys without playing any definite tune.  What drew Jean’s eyes above all was her hair, arranged in some fashion that struck him with a sense of mystery and beauty.

She looked round, and smoothing the lace of her peignoir with one hand: 

“You are Edgar’s friend?” she asked, in a cordial tone, though her voice struck Jean as harsh in this beautiful room that was perfumed like a church.

“Yes, Madame.”

“You like being at school?”

“Yes, madame.”

“The masters are not too strict?”

“No, Madame.”

“You have no mother?”

As she put the question Madame Evans’ voice softened.

“No, Madame.”

“What is your father?”

“A bookbinder, Madame”—­and the bookbinder’s son blushed as he gave the answer.  At that moment he would gladly have consented never to see his father more, his father whom he loved, if by the sacrifice he could have passed for the son of a Captain in the Navy or a Secretary of Embassy.  He suddenly remembered that one of his fellow-pupils was the son of a celebrated physician whose portrait was displayed in the stationers’ windows.

If only he had had a father like that to tell Madame Ewans of! 
But that was out of the question—­and how cruelly unjust it was! 
He felt ashamed of himself, as if he had said something shocking.

But his friend’s mother seemed quite unaffected by the dreadful avowal.  She was still moving her hands at random up and down the keyboard.  Then presently: