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being expelled from school. Had Renée's eyes been accustomed to provincial graces, she would have perceived that strangely got-up though he was, the little shaveling, as she called him, had a way of smiling, of turning his neck, of putting out his arms prettily, with the feminine air of the love-boys at school. He took great pains over his hands, which were long and slender; and though his hair was cropped short by order of the head-master, an ex-colonel of engineers, he owned a little looking glass which he drew from his pocket during school-time and placed between the leaves of his book, looking at himself in it for hours, examining his eyes, his gums, pulling pretty faces, studying the art of coquetry. His school-fellows hung

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round his blouse as round a petticoat, and he buckled his belt so tightly that he had the slim waist and undulating hips of a grown woman. Time it was that he received as many kicks as kisses. ...But the sign of his boyish debauchery, the effimination of his whole being what time he had played the girl, was destined to remain in him, and to strick a lasting blow at his virility.

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The appetites let loose were satisfied at last... The town was becoming a sheer orgy of gold and women. Vice, coming from on high, flowed through the gutters, spread out over the ornamented waters, shot up in the fountains of the public gardens to fall down again upon the roofs in a fine penetrating rain. And at night-time,