Indeed, nothing aroused the interest of little Chebe.  In the work-room she performed her task regularly, silently, without the slightest thought of the future or of saving.  All that she did seemed to be done as if she were waiting for something.

Frantz, on the other hand, had been working for some time with extraordinary energy, the ardor of those who see something at the end of their efforts; so that, at the age of twenty-four, he graduated second in his class from the Ecole Centrale, as an engineer.

On that evening Risler had taken the Chebe family to the Gymnase, and throughout the evening he and Madame Chebe had been making signs and winking at each other behind the children’s backs.  And when they left the theatre Madame Chebe solemnly placed Sidonie’s arm in Frantz’s, as if she would say to the lovelorn youth, “Now settle matters—­here is your chance.”

Thereupon the poor lover tried to settle matters.

It is a long walk from the Gymnase to the Marais.  After a very few steps the brilliancy of the boulevard is left behind, the streets become darker and darker, the passers more and more rare.  Frantz began by talking of the play.  He was very fond of comedies of that sort, in which there was plenty of sentiment.

“And you, Sidonie?”

“Oh! as for me, Frantz, you know that so long as there are fine costumes—­”

In truth she thought of nothing else at the theatre.  She was not one of those sentimental creatures; a la Madame Bovary, who return from the play with love-phrases ready-made, a conventional ideal.  No! the theatre simply made her long madly for luxury and fine raiment; she brought away from it nothing but new methods of arranging the hair, and patterns of gowns.  The new, exaggerated toilettes of the actresses, their gait, even the spurious elegance of their speech, which seemed to her of the highest distinction, and with it all the tawdry magnificence of the gilding and the lights, the gaudy placard at the door, the long line of carriages, and all the somewhat unwholesome excitement that springs up about a popular play; that was what she loved, that was what absorbed her thoughts.

“How well they acted their love-scene!” continued the lover.

And, as he uttered that suggestive phrase, he bent fondly toward a little face surrounded by a white woollen hood, from which the hair escaped in rebellious curls.

Sidonie sighed: 

“Oh! yes, the love-scene.  The actress wore beautiful diamonds.”

There was a moment’s silence.  Poor Frantz had much difficulty in explaining himself.  The words he sought would not come, and then, too, he was afraid.  He fixed the time mentally when he would speak: 

“When we have passed the Porte Saint-Denis—­when we have left the boulevard.”

But when the time arrived, Sidonie began to talk of such indifferent matters that his declaration froze on his lips, or else it was stopped by a passing carriage, which enabled their elders to overtake them.