I awoke with a start and looked about me, but could discern nothing, for the darkness was absolute, impenetrable. What it was that had disturbed me I could not guess. I was about to tell myself I had been dreaming, when I heard a stealthy footstep on the stair. A second followed. Some one was mounting cautiously. With heart leaping at promise of adventure, I grasped my sword and sat upright, noiselessly. The steps drew near and nearer; they were at the top of the stair—and in an instant some one had stumbled over my extended legs and come down with a crash upon the floor. I was upon the intruder in a flash, and was astonished to find it was a woman.

“Who are you?” I whispered fiercely, between my teeth. “And what seek you here?”

“Rather tell me what you seek here, Monsieur,” answered a voice twisted and quivering with rage and malice, but which I nevertheless recognized as that of the concierge. “You have rented the apartment, but not the landing in front of it.”

“I will occupy the landing no longer than to-night,” I said. “But you have not yet told me your business here.”

“I am going to bed,” she answered sullenly. “My room is the one at the end of the corridor.”

“Go, then,” I said, loosing my hold of her, my suspicions not yet allayed. “But remember that I shall still be here and it would be well for you to remain in your room till morning. Another fall such as that might snap some of your dry, old, rotten bones.”

The woman got slowly to her feet and I could hear her cursing softly to herself. She took a step away from me and paused. I could guess what her face was like!

“Since when has it been the fashion,” she snarled, “for a young man to give up his bed to a pretty girl and himself sleep without the door? It was not so in my day.”

“I can well believe it!” I retorted. “Begone!”

She shuffled slowly down the passage. I heard the opening and closing of a door and all was still.

I wrapped my cloak about me once again, but sleep came no more to my eyes. The encounter had filled me with uneasiness. That she was simply on the way to her room, as she had said, I did not believe, but what her object was I could not guess. During my whole week’s wanderings in the streets of Paris I had encountered no face which repelled me as did hers, with its yellow eyes, its sallow, withered cheeks, its surly, snarling mouth. When I had seen it first, it had struck me as threatening and terrible, and this impression deepened as I saw it oftener. Something, I know not what, about the woman told me that she was trembling at heart, that she lived in a state of constant terror. A suggestion of the gutter and the darkness seemed to cling to her, as though she had dragged herself through an abyss reeking with unspeakable foulness.

I could have sworn that she had read my thought in my eyes the first time I looked at her, so livid did her face become, and this belief disturbed me so that I determined to change my lodging, but had chanced upon no other matching the lightness of my purse. I am not a man to be frightened at phantoms of my own imagining, but as I sat there in the darkness I promised myself that another night should find me far from the Rue du Chantre.

Morning came, and the filthy panes of the little window above the stair-head turned from black to gray as I sat there musing. I arose, removed from my clothing the traces of the dirty floor and went down into the court, where I made my toilet at a trough in the yard, keeping one eye upon the stair meanwhile to see that none descended. I had scarce gained the stair-head again, when the door of my room opened, and Mlle. Ribaut appeared framed in the doorway, fresh and rosy as a picture by Watteau.

“Good-morning, M. le Moyne,” she cried, and courtesied to me with a grace worthy of Louis’s court.

“Good-morning, Mademoiselle,” I said, bowing and taking her hand, which, I told myself, was one of the prerogatives of a brother. “I trust you slept well?”

“Never better in my life, Monsieur,” she answered gayly. “I have never before been honored with a guard at my door, especially one on whom I could rely so thoroughly.”

I bowed again at the compliment, and she must have seen the tenderness which I could not keep from my face, for she drew her hand away, and glanced nervously at the floor. I watched her glowing cheek with ravished eyes until, of a sudden, I remembered that a brother would not do so.

“Come, Mademoiselle,” I cried, “we must get breakfast. I know a splendid place just around the corner, where they serve the most excellent coffee, and rolls which fairly melt in one’s mouth.”

“And I am famously hungry,” she answered, laughing, her embarrassment forgotten in an instant. “Wait until I get my hat, Monsieur.”

She was back in a moment, and we went down the stairs together and out into the street. The morning was bright and warm and the streets were thronged with people. I glanced again at my companion’s happy face, and resolved to do nothing which could bring a shade upon it, however difficult I might find the task.

We were soon at the café in the Rue de Beauvais, and the waiter gave us a little table in a corner near the window, whence we could look out upon the busy street. I shall not soon forget that meal. Mlle. Ribaut laughed with delight as the coffee was placed before her, and served it with the prettiest grace in the world. As for me, I almost forgot to eat in gazing at her.

“You appear distracted, M. le Moyne,” she cried. “I’ll wager you are thinking with what an irksome charge you have burdened yourself.”

“Not at all, Mademoiselle,” I answered quickly. “I was thinking how difficult it is to be a brother to an adorable girl with whom one is just getting acquainted.”

“I do not find it at all difficult, Monsieur,” and she laughed gayly. “I assure you, I find it delightful to be a sister. I have never before been a sister, Monsieur, and I enjoy having a big brother immensely.”

I glanced at her merry face, but saw there only guilelessness and innocent good will. My heart fell within me, and I cursed myself for a fool.

“Well, Mademoiselle,” I began.

“Oh, come, Monsieur,” she interrupted, “does a man always call his sister Mademoiselle?”

“No more than a sister calls her brother Monsieur,” I retorted readily.

“Well, my name is Nanette, as I have already had the honor of telling you,” she said.

“And mine is Pierre.”

She clapped her hands together gleefully.

“Splendid!” she cried. “We are getting along famously. I think it is a very pretty name—Pierre. Now, what was it you were about to say?”

In the shock of delight at hearing her pronounce my name, I had quite forgotten. But I rallied my wits with an effort.

“I was about to say that at ten o’clock I shall call upon your uncle. I shall approach him with an assured air, as one who will not brook denial. I shall say to him that you would die rather than consent to this marriage and that you will not return home until he agrees to say no more about it.”

“Ah, you do not know my uncle,” she said sadly. “Believe me, Pierre, he will never agree.”

“In that case,” I answered, with a cheerfulness I confess I did not feel, “we will secure a cottage at St. Cloud, or some other delightful place. I will send for my sister who is in retreat at Aignan, and who would joy to come. You will love each other, I am sure. And there we shall all live happily together until your uncle does consent or until an apoplexy carries him off.”

“That will be charming!” she cried, with dancing eyes. “I almost hope he will not consent, so that it may come true. But, Pierre,” and she hesitated.

“Yes?”

“All this will take money,” she continued, after a moment, “and you told me your fortune is not great.”

“Well, I will increase it,” I declared, though I confess I had no idea how I should do so, unless I enlisted as a brigand under that arrant knave and prince of thieves, Cartouche. Yet not even that could I do—there was my sister—I had kissed the cross—you shall hear.

She was silenced for a moment, and then took a purse from the bosom of her dress.

“Will you keep this for me,” she asked, “and use it when there is need? ’Tis what I brought from home with me, my sweetmeat money.”

“Impossible,” I protested. “Keep your money, Mademoiselle.”

She looked at me a moment with quivering lips.

“That is not like my brother,” she said at last. “My brother would understand that I do not wish to be a burden to him. At least, he would consent to keep it for me, for fear that I might lose it.”

I reached out, took the purse, and placed it carefully in my bosom.

“When you wish it again, you have only to ask for it, Nanette,” I said.

“That is better,” and her face cleared. “And now, Pierre, what shall I do while you are conferring with my uncle?”

“I think it will be best for you to remain in my room,” I answered, after a moment’s thought. “I will return there at once, so soon as I have seen him, and if I am unsuccessful we can set about securing that cottage I mentioned a moment ago.”

“Very well,” she said sedately. “And I assure you that I shall not be idle. I saw some clothing in your room this morning that was oh, so badly in need of repair. I intend to make you a good sister, Pierre.”

“A good sister!” I murmured, and bit my tongue to keep it still.

“Yes, a good sister,” and then she looked at me, her face suddenly serious. “But there is one thing that must be remedied—I know so little about my brother. You must tell me more, Pierre.”

“Ah, I should love to!” I cried. “And you really care to know?”

Who, looking deep into her eyes, could have lacked inspiration?

“All! All!” she nodded, and leaned towards me, her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table. “Of my life I told you in a sentence—I have done nothing—nothing has happened to me. But with you, it is different—you are a man. You have lived always in the great world.”

I looked at the curve of her dainty wrists, the little pink, interlocked fingers, the cheeks soft and delicate as peach-bloom, and then up into the eyes, dark, pure and quite fathomless. I pinched my leg beneath the table to make sure I was not dreaming. Was ever youth so fortunate?

“We have an hour,” she concluded. “You are going to see my uncle at ten—it is not yet nine. So you will have time to tell me all—every word.”

“Yes, every word,” I echoed. “But shall it be here, or——”

“Oh, here! Here it is so cosey, so homelike, and we seem to have known each other for ages instead of merely since last night. Can it be that I have known you only since last night?”

“No,” I said, with conviction. “We have known each other long and long, only fate held us apart. Now we can laugh at fate.”

“Yes. But the story.”

“Very well—the story.”

“And, mind—no skipping!” she cried, shaking her finger at me warningly. “I must have every word.”

Who, looking deep into her eyes, could have lacked inspiration?