Laurent left the house in a rage which made it impossible for him to say a word; but he had not taken thirty steps in the street, when he returned, telling Catherine that he had forgotten to deliver a message which somebody had given him for her mistress. He found Thérèse sitting in a small salon; the garden door was still open; she seemed to have gone so far, and to have paused there, grieved and downcast, absorbed in her reflections. She received him frigidly. "So you have come back?" she said; "what is it that you forgot?" "I forgot to tell you the truth." "I no longer care to hear it." "But you asked me for it?" "I thought that you might tell it spontaneously." "And I might have, I should have; I was wrong not to do it. Look you, Thérèse, do you think it possible for a man of my age to see you without falling in love with you?" "In love?" said Thérèse, with a frown. "So you were making sport of me, were you, when you told me that you could not fall in love with any woman?" "No, indeed; I said what I thought." "Then you were mistaken, and you are really in love! are you quite sure of it?" "Oh! don't be angry; great Heaven! I am not sure enough for that. Thoughts of love have passed through my head, through my senses, if you choose. Have you so little experience that you considered it impossible?" "I am old enough to have had experience," she replied; "but I have lived alone for a long while. I have had no experience of certain situations. Does that surprise you? It is true, none the less. I am very simple-minded, although I have been deceived, like everybody else! You have told me a hundred times that you respected me too much to look upon me as a woman, for the reason that your love for women was altogether gross. So I believed that I was in no danger from the outrage of your desires; and of all that I esteemed in you, your sincerity upon that point was what I esteemed most highly. I allowed myself to become interested in your destiny with the greater freedom, because, you remember, we said to each other, laughing, but with serious meaning: 'Between two persons, of whom one is an idealist and the other a materialist, there is the Baltic Sea.'" "I said it in all sincerity, and I walked confidently along the shore on my side, without an idea of crossing; but it happened that the ice would not bear. Is it my fault that I am twenty-four, and that you are beautiful?" "Am I still beautiful? I hoped not."