. . .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 . . . Read More