He looked at Rosalie, and the resemblance between the girl and her mother struck him most forcibly. She was pretty, for all that. Her oval face, pale with evident grief, had an ivory tint as she bent down over her knitting in the lamp-light, and when she raised her eyes to his the sincerity of the passion that animated her shone forth from beneath her long lashes. But why were her eyes of precisely the same shade of colour as her mother's? Why, with twenty-four years between them, had they the same shape of brow, the same cut of the chin, and the same lines of the mouth? But how unjust to blame this innocent child for that resemblance, for that pallor, for that grief, and even for the silence in which she wrapped herself! Alas! that it should be so, but when we have wronged a woman it is easy enough to find an inexhaustible source of unjust complaints against her. Rosalie had unwittingly committed the crime of adding remorse to the feelings brought into play by René's fresh passion. She represented that past which we never forgive if it becomes an obstacle between us and our future. False as most women are in matters of love, their perfidy can never sufficiently punish the secret selfishness of the majority of men. If René had had the sorry courage of his friend Claude Larcher, and looked himself straight in the face, he would have had to confess that the real cause of his irritation lay in the fact that he had deceived Rosalie. But he was a poet, and one who was an adept at throwing a veil over the ugly parts of his soul. He therefore compelled himself to think of Suzanne, and of the noble love which had sprung up and was burning within him; for the first time he succeeded in forming a resolve to break definitely with Rosalie, saying to himself, 'I will be worthy of _her!_' _She_ was the lying wanton who, with her luxurious surroundings, her rare science of dress, her incomparable power of aping sentiment, and her seductive, soul-troubling beauty, had such immense advantages over sweet, simple-hearted Rosalie. Her beauty once more rose up before René's enslaved imagination just as old Offarel was giving the signal for departure by rising and saying to Fresneau, 'I've won fourteen _sous_ from you--ha! ha! that'll keep me in cigars for a week. Come,' he added, turning to his wife, 'are you ladies ready?' 'Since we are all here,' replied Madame Offarel, emphasising the word 'all' by darting a look at René. 'When are you coming to dinner? Would Saturday suit you? That's M. Fresneau's best day, I believe?' The professor replying in the affirmative, she now addressed herself to the poet direct, 'Will that suit you, René? You'll be more comfortable at our place, I can assure you, than amongst all those grand people on whom your friend Larcher goes sponging.' 'But, Madame----' exclaimed the poet.