’Least of all by you,
Mr. Saintou.’

She repeated this last rhyming couplet with a quaint musical intonation, as though it was the refrain of a song, and after her voice and laughter had died away she went on nodding her head in time to the brushing as if she were singing it over softly to herself.  This distressed the hairdresser not a little, and he remained silent.

‘What shall I pay you, Mr. Saintou?’ said the little lady, when the large hat was once more on the head.

‘If mademoiselle would but come again,’ said the hairdresser, putting both hands resolutely behind his back.

‘When I come again I shall pay you both for that time and this,’ she said, with perhaps more tact than could have been expected of her.  ’And if you want to live long, Mr. Saintou, don’t feel.  If I should feel I should die off, quick, sharp, like a moth that flies into the candle.’  She made a little gesture with her hand, as if to indicate the ease and suddenness with which the supposed catastrophe was to take place, and hobbled down the street.  Saintou stood in the doorway looking after her, and his heart went from him.

He sent her flowers—­flowers that a duchess might have been proud to receive.  He sent them more than once, and they were accepted; he argued much from that.  He made friends with the baker in order that he might bow to him morning and evening.  Then he waited.  He said to himself, ’She is English.  If I go to see her, if I put my hand on my heart and weep, she will jeer at me; but if I wait and work for her in silence, then she will believe.’  He made a parlour for her in the room above his shop; and every week, as he had time and money, he went out to choose some ornament for it.  His maiden sister watched these actions with suspicion, threw scornful looks at when he observed her watchfulness, and lent a kindly helping hand when he was out of sight.  The parlour grew into a shrine ready for its divinity, and the hairdresser worked and waited in silence.  In this he made a mistake, but he feared her laughter.

Meanwhile the girl also waited.  She could not go back to the hairdresser’s shop lest she should seem to invite a renewal of those attentions which had given her the sweet surprise of love.  The law of her woman’s nature stood like a lion in the path.  She waited through the months of the dreary winter till the one gleam of sunshine which had come into her hard young life had faded, till the warmth it had kindled in her heart died—­as a lamp’s flame dies for lack of oil; died—­as a flower dies in the drought; died into anger for the man who had disturbed her peace, and when she thought she cared for him no more she went again to get her hair cut.

‘You have come,’ said Saintou; but the very strength of his feeling made him grave.

’Good gracious, yes, I have come to have my hair cut.  You would not cut it when I was here, and I have been very poorly these three months.  I could not come out, so the other day I had my sister cut it off.  My father wanted to send for you, but I said “no,” and, oh, my! it looks just as if a donkey had come behind and mistaken it for hay.’