“And it cut you to the quick,” I said. “It made you depart from your dignity to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to be there. And considering that it was some more parrot talk after all (men have been saying that sort of thing to women from the beginning of the world) this sensibility seems to me childish.” “What perspicacity,” she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then changed her tone. “Therefore he wasn’t expected to-day when he turned up, whereas you, who were expected, remained subject to the charms of conversation in that studio. It never occurred to you . . . did it? No! What had become of your perspicacity?” “I tell you I was weary of life,” I said in a passion. She had another faint smile of a fugitive and unrelated kind as if she had been thinking of far-off things, then roused herself to grave animation. “He came in full of smiling playfulness. How well I know that mood! Such self-command has its beauty; but it’s no great help for a man with such fateful eyes. I could see he was moved in his correct, restrained way, and in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something that would be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends, we two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when coming back dead-tired from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to it and yet hadn’t the courage to tear himself away from here. He was as simple as that. He’s a _très galant homme_ of absolute probity, even with himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn’t love but mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy, but I didn’t like to use that word. A parrot would have added that I had given him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized the rights of his passion which I could very well see. He is jealous. He is not jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustful of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the same way Therese does, as something that can be touched with grace or go to perdition; and he doesn’t want to be damned with me before his own judgment seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own Basque peasant soul and don’t want to think that every time he goes away from my feet—yes, _mon cher_, on this carpet, look for the marks of scorching—that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his moral sleeve. That! Never!” With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in her fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously.