"You are not my father, that is true ... but you are my friend ... and I owe you all the confidence in the world.... Forgive me!... Yes, I live with Juliette, and I love her and she loves me!... Is it a crime to seek a little happiness?... Juliette is not the kind of a woman you thought she was ... she has been calumniated most odiously, Lirat.... She is kind and honest.... Oh, don't smile ... she is honest!... She has some childish ways about her that would touch even you, Lirat. You don't like her because you don't know her.... If you only knew how kind and considerate she is to me! Juliette wants me to work.... She ardently believes in me, in my ability to create.... Why it was she who sent me here to see you. I was ashamed and afraid.... Yes she made me do that! Have a little consideration for her, Lirat. Love her a little, I beg of you!" Lirat became grave. He put his hand on my shoulder and, looking at me wistfully: "My dear child!" he said to me in a trembling voice, "why do you tell me all that?" "Because it is the truth, my dear Lirat! ... because I love you and I want to remain your friend.... Show me that you are my friend no matter what happens... Here now, come to have dinner with us this evening, as we used to in the past, in my own house. Oh, please come!" "No," he said. And this "no" was relentless, final, curt, like a gunshot. Lirat added: "But you come often!... And whenever you feel like crying ... the sofa is there ... you know.... The tears of poor devils are quite known to it." When the door was shut behind me, it seemed that something huge and heavy had closed itself upon my past, that walls higher than the sky and darker than the night had separated me forever from my decent life, from my dreams of art. There was anguish in my whole being.... For a minute I stood there, stupefied, with swinging arms, with eyes inordinately distended, staring at that prophetic door behind which something had just come to a close, something had just died. CHAPTER VI Juliette was not long in wearying of this beautiful apartment where she had promised herself so much peace and happiness. Having arranged her wardrobes and put her knick-knacks in order, she did not know what to do next and was surprised at this discovery. The tapestry no longer excited her admiration, reading afforded her no distraction. She passed from one room to another, without knowing what to do, what to busy her mind with, yawning, stretching herself. She shut herself up in her room where she spent hours in dressing herself, in trying on new clothes in front of the looking glass, in turning the faucet of the bath tub, which occupation amused her for a while, in combing Spy and in making elaborate bows for him from the bands of her old hats.