Marianne now seemed to be still more strange and seductive to Rosas. All this romantic conduct, commonplace as it was, with which she surrounded herself, exalted her in the estimation of the duke. She became in that little chamber where she was simply Mademoiselle Robert, a hundred times more charming and attractive to him than any problem: a veritable Parisian sphinx. She was not his mistress. He loved her too deeply, with a holy, respectful passion, to take her hastily, as by chance, and Marianne was too skilful to risk any imprudent act, well-knowing that if she yielded too quickly, it would not be a woman who would fall into the duke's arms, but an idol that descended from its pedestal. In the silence of the old house in the deserted quarter, they held conversations in the course of which Rosas freely abandoned himself, and through which she gained every day a more intimate knowledge of the character of that man who was so different from those who hitherto had sought her for pleasure. Thus, the very respect that he instinctively felt for her, impelled her to love him. She had not been accustomed to such treatment. Every masculine look that since her puberty she had felt riveted upon her, clearly expressed even before the lips spoke: "You are beautiful. You please me. Will you?" Rosas, at least, said: "I love you," before: "I desire you." Tainted in the body which she had given, offered, abandoned, sold, she felt that she was respected by him even in that body, and although she considered him silly, she thought him superior to all others, or at least different, and that was a sufficient motive for loving him. One day she said to him in a peculiar tone and with her distracting smile: "Do you know, my dear Jose, there is one thing I should not have believed? You are bashful!" He turned slightly pale. "Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known." "Perhaps!" said Marianne. Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might speak of his passion or of his reminiscences. She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his mistress. "No!" he said, with a smile, "it is only a Frenchman who would despise the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a fall." Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression. "What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?" "I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!" She felt her color change. Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said? Jose added in a very gentle tone: "Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?" "You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions." "What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day? Was he there to see you?" Marianne smiled.