"Not yourself? What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"What do you mean by _not exactly_? Oh, but you must not be ill. We have to work at our play this evening, and if you do not set about it, all of you, and in earnest, why, it will never be finished for the race-ball."
"I don't care a hang about the play, and--I--if I were you--"
He stopped abruptly, evidently embarrassed.
"Well?" asked Bijou, "what is it? You were going to say something."
"Yes," he stammered out, scarcely knowing how to put what he wanted to say. "I was going to remark that the design Jean has made for your--for Hebe's dress--"
"Well, it isn't the thing at all; there is too little of it."
"It isn't nonsense. I say it is not the thing for a woman, and especially a young girl like you, to appear like that."
Bijou looked at Paul de Rueille with a bewildered expression on her face, and then burst out laughing.
"Oh, you are queer; you look exactly like a jealous husband."
"Jealous!" he stammered out, vexed and ill at ease. "It isn't for me to be jealous, but I--"
"No, certainly, but all the same, without being jealous, you men do not like a woman to look pretty, or to be nice, or amusing, for anyone else's benefit than just your own."
"Well, admitting that that is so, it is quite natural."
"Ah! you think so? Oh, well, a woman, on the contrary, is always glad when the men she likes are admired; she is delighted when other people like them too."
"Nonsense! You do not know anything about it, my dear Bijou. You are most deliciously inexperienced in such things fortunately."
"Why _fortunately_?" she asked, opening her soft, innocent eyes wide in astonishment.
He stopped short, and Bijou insisted, pinching his arm.
"No, it would be too complicated," he answered, evidently ill at ease, and trying to shake off the grasp of the strong little hand.
"Too complicated!" repeated Bijou, turning red. "I detest being put off like that. Why will you not explain what you were thinking?"
"Explain what I was thinking," he said, in a sort of fright. "Oh, no!"
They went on for a minute or two without speaking, Bijou calm and smiling, and her companion with a serious, uneasy look on his face.
Just as the gig was entering the avenue, Bijou turned towards M. de Rueille, and touching him, this time very gently, with her little hand, she said in a penetrating voice, which, in his agitated state of mind, was the last straw: