"My dear Lucien, you have given me _some_ of the facts; before morning I
hope we'll have others and--hello!"

He stopped abruptly to look at a comical little man with a very large
mouth, the owner of the place, who had been hovering about for some moments
as if anxious to say something.

"What is it, my friend?" asked Coquenil good-naturedly.

At this the proprietor coughed in embarrassment and motioned to a prim,
thin-faced woman in the front room who came forward with fidgety shyness,
begging the gentlemen to forgive her if she had done wrong, but there was
something on her conscience and she couldn't sleep without telling it.

"Well?" broke in Pougeot impatiently, but Coquenil gave the woman a
reassuring look and she went on to explain that she was a spinster living
in a little attic room of the next house, overlooking the Rue Marboeuf. She
worked as a seamstress all day in a hot, crowded _atelier_, and when she
came home at night she loved to go out on her balcony, especially these
fine summer evenings. She would stand there and brush her hair while she
watched the sunset deepen and the swallows circle over the chimney tops. It
was an excellent thing for a woman's hair to brush it a long time every
night; she always brushed hers for half an hour--that was why it was so
thick and glossy.

"But, my dear woman," smiled Coquenil, "what has that to do with me? I have
very little hair and no time to brush it."

The seamstress begged his pardon, the point was that on the previous