One of them happened to come into our carriage, and shed its intermittent light, which seemed to be extinguished one moment and to be burning the next.  I covered the carriage-lamp with its blue shade and watched the strange fly careering about in its fiery flight.  Suddenly it settled on the dark hair of our neighbor, who was half dozing after dinner.  Paul seemed delighted, with his eyes fixed on the bright, sparkling spot, which looked like a living jewel on the forehead of the sleeping woman.

The Italian woke up about eleven o’clock, with the bright insect still in her hair.  When I saw her move, I said:  “We are just getting to Genoa, madame,” and she murmured, without answering me, as if possessed by some obstinate and embarrassing thought: 

“What am I going to do, I wonder?”

And then she suddenly asked: 

“Would you like me to come with you?”

I was so taken aback that I really did not understand her.

“With us?  How do you mean?”

She repeated, looking more and more furious: 

“Would you like me to be your guide now, as soon as we get out of the train?”

“I am quite willing; but where do you want to go.”

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of supreme indifference.

“Wherever you like; what does it matter to me?” She repeated her “Che mi fa” twice.

“But we are going to the hotel.”

“Very well, let us all go to the hotel,” she said, in a contemptuous voice.

I turned to Paul, and said: 

“She wishes to know whether we should like her to come with us.”

My friend’s utter surprise restored my self-possession.  He stammered: 

“With us?  Where to?  What for?  How?”

“I don’t know, but she made this strange proposal to me in a most irritated voice.  I told her that we were going to the hotel, and she said:  ‘Very well, let us all go there!’ I suppose she is without a penny.  She certainly has a very strange way of making acquaintances.”

Paul, who ’was very much excited, exclaimed: 

“I am quite agreeable.  Tell her that we will go wherever she likes.”  Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he said uneasily: 

“We must know, however, with whom she wishes to go—­with you or with me?”

I turned to the Italian, who did not even seem to be listening to us, and said: 

“We shall be very happy to have you with us, but my friend wishes to know whether you will take my arm or his?”

She opened her black eyes wide with vague surprise, and said, “Che ni fa?”

I was obliged to explain myself.  “In Italy, I believe, when a man looks after a woman, fulfils all her wishes, and satisfies all her caprices, he is called a patito.  Which of us two will you take for your patito?”

Without the slightest hesitation she replied: 

“You!”

I turned to Paul.  “You see, my friend, she chooses me; you have no chance.”