"They will go by the other, the dark one—Mademoiselle Clémentine."
"Is that her name? And the name of your sweetheart?"
Sanguinetti looked at me an instant with his usual helplessly mistrustful little blush, and then he answered, "Théodolinde."
When I asked him how his suit was prospering, he usually replied that he believed it to be merely a question of time. "We keep talking it over, and in that way, at any rate, I can see her. The poor woman can't get used to the idea."
"I should think not."
"She says it would change everything—that the shop would be a different place without her. She is so well known, so universally admired. I tell her that it will not be impossible to get a clever substitute; and she answers that, clever as the substitute may be, she will never have the peculiar charm of Théodolinde."
"Ah! she herself is aware then of this peculiar charm?"
"Perfectly, and it delights her to have me talk about it."
A part of the charm's peculiarity, I reflected, was that it was not spoiled by the absence of modesty; yet I also remembered the coiffeur's handsome wife had looked extremely modest. Sanguinetti, how-
