Lélise glides into the “Nouvelle Athénée,” a café whose clientèle is made up of soberer habitués.
She is pretty, this Lélise, a nervous little blonde with the merriest of blue eyes, and the pink of neatness, her clothes being fashioned in the best of Parisian good taste.
“_Dis donc, mon vieux_,” she calls, clapping her hands to the garçon.
“_Un grog bien chaud, et de quoi écrire._”
“_Un Américain, un!_” he calls, as he hurries for the portfolio and pen and ink, which he lays before Lélise quite ceremoniously, while another waiter brings to her the steaming “_grog Américain_.”
Lélise draws off her gloves with an air of importance and begins a voluminous correspondence. Five letters in all, written in a rapid angular hand like the autographs across the pictures of soubrettes.
Handwriting of this sort has evidently made its impression upon Lélise. She writes with all the extravagant flourish of these souvenirs—she even adds Ys and Ts of her own creation. This often leads to a reckless use of capitals beginning words of importance. Furthermore, she underscores these with savage-looking scratches meant to emphasize the intensity of her feeling about whatever comes into her pretty head. The solemn word, “_L’Amour_,” is often accented by two of these parallel lines drawn with unhesitating decision. Again the tender word, “_Toujours_,” is half ripped from the paper by two formidable underlines, each of them started with a little dig that makes the pen spatter.
“_Immédiatement_,” and words suggesting hate and jealousy are made to glare out from the page like danger-signals.
But you must not think me guilty of overlooking the five letters of Lélise—I can vouch only for the one I received. The aged garçon, François, who brought it over to me hidden in the folds of a fresh napkin, received it through mademoiselle’s gray muff while with the other hand he helped her escort, a dashing young officer of the hussars, on with his night-coat.
The young officer’s tip slid to the bottom of François’s pocket, where it clinked against my own.
[Illustration: ALONG THE BOULEVARD CLICHY]
Lélise buttoned her gloves, adjusted her veil, picked up her skirt and followed her escort to the door, that François held open, and the two disappeared in the night.