Goursac, preparing to wheel into a side street, called back, with a laugh of which only Nicole could guess the cost: "Good-by, my children; I leave you in peace. Love-making is disconcerting to the older generation. Reconcile yourselves quickly." Barabant and Nicole, thus left to themselves, continued arm in arm silently homeward, avoiding the thronged thoroughfares, the noise and the lights, plunging by preference down quiet ways where only an occasional window reddened the sides of the night. Barabant struggled to maintain his just anger; Nicole, who had yielded to an impulse in accosting him, searched for some means to regain the ground which she felt she had surrendered. "You don't answer," she said at last, withdrawing her arm half-way. "You want me to go?" He freed himself brusquely and faced her with the angry cry: "Coquette!" "No, that I am not!" she cried, and seizing his arm, she said rapidly: "Barabant, it is not true. You have no right to say that!" "You have a right to be what you wish." Nicole, checking herself, said sadly: "You still believe I am playing with you?" "I do." She withdrew a step and shook her head. "No, it is not you I am playing with." Barabant, who did not fathom the allusion, started to ask her what she meant; but Nicole, immediately perceiving the danger, retreated from her serious mood, and slipping her arm through his, said imperiously as they started on: "Barabant, have you ever been in love--seriously in love?" "Oh!" "But seriously?" "No." "I was sure of it." "And why?" Barabant demanded, nettled at her assumption. "Because you understand nothing of a woman." She continued rapidly: "Listen to reason, my friend. You assume rights over me and my actions, and yet what right have you? You have never once told me that you love me. Yet you are angry because I insist upon being wooed, foolish, ignorant fellow!" Her reproof, which she designed to be heavy, weakened despite herself, until at the end she pronounced it almost caressingly. "Is that just, Nicole?" Barabant cried, seizing the opening. "Why am I angry? Because you will not give me the opportunity." He drew her closer to him. "Nicole, listen to me but once." "No, no," she checked him imperiously, "I do not wish to. You are too headlong. Barabant, I tell you, you do not know yourself." "I--I don't know what I feel?" She checked him again. "If you do, then respect my wishes." She added almost pleadingly: "Not too fast, Barabant. Be reasonable and I will not avoid you again." Then peremptorily changing the subject: "Did you see Louison? She is always at an execution." He accepted the turn reluctantly. "I saw her." "How did she affect you?" "Like a snake," he answered, using Goursac's expression. "There is something about her that repels me." "I was afraid she might attract you," she confessed, with a laugh, in which showed a little relief.