CHAPTER XXV
WHEREIN MAURICE FINDS HIS ANGEL AGAIN
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HE performance was over. Bouchotte in her dressing-room was taking off her make-up, when the door opened softly and old Monsieur Sandraque, her protector, came in, followed by a troop of her other admirers. Without so much as turning her head, she asked them what they meant by coming and staring at her like a pack of imbeciles, and whether they thought they were in a tent at the Neuilly Fair, looking at the freak woman.
“Now, then, ladies and gentlemen,” she rattled on derisively, “just put a penny in the box for the young lady’s marriage-portion, and she’ll let you feel her legs,—all made of marble!”
Then, with an angry glance at the admiring throng, she exclaimed: “Come, off you go! Look alive!”
She sent them all packing, her sweetheart Théophile among them,—the pale-faced, long-haired, gentle, melancholy, short-sighted, and dreamy Théophile.
But recognizing her little Maurice, she gave him
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