“Ask your mother. But listen to me now, for it is not a question of that. You must marry. Your mother has a small income which your father left her, but this income comes from the profits of the manufactory, which belongs to your grandmother, and she cannot bear your mother, who will therefore lose that income, and then she will have nothing, and three children on her hands. It is that accursed lawyer who is arranging all this. The whys and wherefores would take too long to explain. Your father managed his business affairs very badly. You must marry, therefore, if not for your own sake, for the sake of your mother and sisters. You can then give your mother the hundred thousand francs your father left you, which no one else can touch. Monsieur Bed—— will settle three hundred thousand francs on you. I have arranged everything, so that you can give this to your mother if you like, and with four hundred thousand francs she will be able to live very well.” I cried and sobbed, and asked to have time to think it over. I found my mother in the dining-room. “Has your godfather told you?” she asked gently, in rather a timid way. “Yes, mother, yes; he has told me. Let me think it over, will you?” I said, sobbing; as I kissed her neck lingeringly. I then locked myself in my bedroom, and for the first time for many days I regretted my convent. All my childhood rose up before me, and I cried more and more, and felt so unhappy that I wished I could die. Gradually, however, I began to get calm again, and realised what had happened and what my godfather’s words meant. Most decidedly I did not want to marry this man. Since I had been at the Conservatoire I had learnt a few things vaguely, very vaguely, for I was never alone, but I understood enough to make me not want to marry without being in love. I was, however, destined to be attacked in a quarter from which I should not have expected it. Madame Guérard asked me to go up to her room to see the embroidery she was doing on a frame for my mother’s birthday. My astonishment was great to find M. Bed—— there. He begged me to change my mind. He made me very wretched, for he pleaded with tears in his eyes. “Do you want a larger marriage settlement?” he asked. “I would make it five hundred thousand francs.” But it was not that at all, and I said in a very low voice, “I do not love you, Monsieur.” “If you do not marry me, Mademoiselle,” he said, “I shall die of grief.” I looked at him, and repeated to myself the words “die of grief.” I was embarrassed and desperate, but at the same time delighted, for he loved me just as a man does in a play. Phrases that I had read or heard came to my mind vaguely, and I repeated them without any real conviction, and then left him without the slightest coquetry. M. Bed—— did not die. He is still living, and has a very important financial position. He is much nicer now than when he was so black, for at present he is quite white.