"I don't interfere with your means of existence, I have no right to do it. I have not the good or ill fortune to be your mother; but I am your sister,--_in Apollo_, as our classic Bernard says,--and it is impossible for me not to be grieved by your spasms of indolence." "But what difference can it make to you?" cried Laurent, with a mingling of irritation and pleasure which Thérèse felt, and which impelled her to reply frankly. "Listen, my dear Laurent," she said, "we must have an understanding. I have a very great friendship for you." "I am very proud of it, but I do not know why! Indeed, I am of no use as a friend, Thérèse. I have no more belief in friendship than in love between a man and woman." "You have told me that before, and it makes no difference to me what you do or do not believe. For my own part, I believe in what I feel, and I feel both interest and affection for you. I am like that: I cannot endure to have any person whatsoever about me without becoming attached to him and wishing that he might be happy. I am accustomed to do my utmost in that direction, without caring whether the person in question is grateful to me or not. Now you are not any person whatsoever, you are a man of genius, and, what is more, a man of heart, I trust." "I, a man of heart? Yes, if you use the term in the ordinary worldly meaning. I know how to fight a duel, pay my debts, and defend the woman to whom I offer my arm, whoever she may be. But if you consider me tender-hearted, loving, artless----" "I know that you affect to be old, blasé and corrupt. But your affectation produces no effect on me. It is a very popular fashion at the present time. In your case, it is a disease, genuine it may be and painful, but it will pass away when you choose. You are a man of heart, for the very reason that you suffer because of the emptiness of your heart; a woman will come along who will fill it, if she knows how to go about it and if you will let her. But this is outside of my subject; I am speaking to the artist; the man in you is unhappy, only because the artist is not satisfied with himself."