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24 But this is an episode entirely out of the track. Let us return to the question,—her foot."

"If you will allow me to call upon you to-morrow, Mademoiselle Julie, I shall have the honor of bringing you her shoe."

"Bring it. I will try it on. That appeals to my curiosity."

Storeshnikof was enraptured. Why? Because he had got into Jean's wake, and Jean was in Serge's wake, and Julie—she was one of the most prominent of the French ladies among all the French ladies of Serge's society. It was an honor, a great honor."

"I don't care anything about her foot," said Jean; "but I as a practical man am interested in something beside her foot. I want to see if she has a pretty figure."

"Her figure is very pretty," said Storeshnikof, who was encouraged by the praise given his taste, and who thought at the same time that he could give Julie a compliment. He had not dared to do so before. "Her figure is charming, although to praise another woman's figure here is certainly blasphemy."

"Ha! ha! ha! this gentleman wants to make a compliment on my figure! I am neither a hypocrite nor a liar, Monsieur Storeshnik, and I don't praise myself, nor can I endure that others should flatter what is bad in me. Thank God, I have something for which I can honestly be praised. But my figure! ha! ha! ha! Jean, you can tell him whether my figure is worth praising. Jean, why don't you speak? Your hand, Monsieur Storeshnik." She seized his hand. "See here! Now you will know that I am not all that I seem! I have to wear a padded dress, just as I wear a petticoat, not because I like it. No, in my opinion it would be better without such hypocrisy, but because it is the fashion. But a woman who has lived as I have, and how have I lived Monsieur Storeshnik? I am a saint now compared to what I have been; such a woman cannot preserve her beauty!"

And suddenly she burst into tears,—"My beauty! My beauty! my lost innocence! Oh God, why was I born?"

"You lie, gentlemen!" she cried, jumping up and pounding with her fist on the table. "You are slanderers. You are low fellows. She is not his mistress. He is trying to buy her. I saw how she turned away from him; how she burned with indignation and with scorn. It was contemptible."

"Yes," said the civilian, lazily stretching himself, "you