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256 What will Cécile say,—oh, yes, what will she say? It’s a pity you can’t be constant two months, yes, by Jove! and the Quarter is indulgent, but you abuse it’s good-nature and mine too!”

Presently, he arose, and jamming his hat on his head, marched to the door.

“Heaven alone knows why any one puts up with your antics, but they all do and so do I. If I were Cécile or any of the other pretty fools after whom you have toddled and will, in all human probabilities, continue to toddle, I say, if I were Cécile I'd spank you! Now I’m going to Boulant’s, and as usual I shall make excuses for you and arrange the affair, and I don’t care a continental where you are going, but, by the skull of the studio skeleton! if you don’t turn up to-morrow with your sketching-kit under one arm and Cécile under the other,—if you don’t turn up in good shape, I’m done with you, and the rest can think what they please. Good-night.”

Clifford said good-night with as pleasant a smile as he could muster, and then sat down with his eyes on the door. He took out his watch and gave Elliott ten minutes to vanish, then rang the concierge’s call, murmuring, “Oh, dear, oh, dear, why the devil do I do it?”

“Alfred,” he said, as that gimlet-eyed person answered the call, “make yourself clean and proper, Alfred, and replace your sabots with a pair of shoes. Then put on your best hat and take this letter to the big white house in the rue de Dragon. There is no answer, mon petit Alfred.”

The concierge departed with a snort in which unwillingness for the errand and affec-