XX

Madame Francine wept throughout the ceremony and her tears were because she loved Mimi and not⁠—well, not very much because she did not know what she would do now that Mimi was going to leave the shop. Mimi had wanted to keep on working but Jimmie had been adamant. “You’ve worked long enough already⁠—now you’re going to play!” he had declared, and there was no changing his mind. Jimmie’s mother was there, white-haired and kindly and self-effacing, but she had kissed Mimi tenderly and said: “My dear, you’re the only woman I’ve ever seen who’s good enough for my Jimmie!” Jimmie became mildly tipsy from the imbibing of many glasses of champagne drunk as toasts, and the breakfast was yet in progress, that is, the liquid portion of it, when Mimi, more lovely than ever in a coral green gown with a hat to match which Madame Francine herself had designed, slipped away with Jimmie at three in the afternoon.