'Would that these women had souls of the same stuff as their dresses!' exclaimed Claude with a smile. 'But you surprise me,' he went on; 'do you think that you will be in Society because you are received by Madame Komof, a foreign countess who keeps open house, or by any of the lion-hunters whom you will meet there, and who will tell you that they are at home every afternoon? You will go out a good deal, if you like that kind of thing, but you will be no more in Society than I or any other artist or even genius, simply because you were not born in it, and because your family is not in it. You will be received and made much of. But try to marry into one of these families and you will see what they will tell you. And a good thing for you, too. Good heavens! if you only knew these women whom you picture to yourself as being so refined, so elegant, so aristocratic! Mere bundles of vanity, dressed by Worth or Laferrière . . . Why, there are not ten in the whole of Paris capable of true feeling. The most honest are those who take a lover because they like him. Were you to dissect them, you would find in place of a heart a dressmaker's bill, half-a-dozen prejudices which serve as principles, and a mad desire to eclipse some other woman. What fools we are to be here in this vehicle--two fairly sensible men with work to do at home--you all of a tremble at the idea of mixing with so-called _grandes dames_, and I . . .!' 'What has Colette been doing to-day?' asked René quietly, a little put out by the asperity of his friend's words, though not laying much weight upon arguments applied with such evident rancour. These furious outbursts were nearly always caused, as he knew, by some coquetry on the part of the actress with whom Claude was madly in love, and who delighted in fooling him, though loving him in her way. It was one of those attachments, based on hatred and sensuality, which both torture and degrade the heart, and which transform their victim into a wild beast, one of the features peculiar to this sort of passion being the frequency with which it is liable to suffer crises as sharp and violent as the physical ideas on which it feeds.