her lips with her tongue. According to Henriette she was exactly like an ogress in a picture book savouring in anticipation the pretty morsel she meant to devour for supper. “We make troubles and inconveniences for the kind old fool of a woman who lets us sing our little songs in her Bar and dance with her clients and who pays us generously into the bargain. We won’t help her at all to keep the roof over her head. We treat her rich clients like mud. Only the beautiful officers are good enough for us! Bah! And we are virtuous too! Oh, he, he, he! Yes, but virtue isn’t bread and butter, my little one. So here’s an address.” She took a slip of paper from the shelf behind her and pushed it towards Marguerite. Marguerite took a step forward to the counter and picked up the paper.

“What am I to do with this, Madame?” she asked in perplexity.

“You are to go to that address, Mademoiselle.”

“To-morrow?”

“Now, little fool!”

“Why?”

“He is waiting for you.”

Marguerite shrank back, her face white as paper, her great eyes wide with horror.

“Who?” she asked in a whisper.

“Petras Tetarnis.”

Madame Delagrange nodded her head at Marguerite with an indignant satisfaction.

“Off you go! We shall be a little more modest, to-morrow evening, eh? We shan’t look at everybody as if they would dirty our little slippers if we stepped on them. Come, take your seven francs and hurry off. Or,” and she thrust out her lips savagely, “never come back to the Villa Iris.”

Marguerite stood and stared at the paper in her hands.

“You can’t mean it, Madame.”

Madame snorted contemptuously.

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