“No,” she replied in a dull voice, “you must not think me better than I really am. There are days when that glittering life tempts me. I have been rich, you see. Up to the age of twelve or thirteen I was surrounded by all the luxuries it was possible for a father making 100,000 francs a year on the Stock Exchange to give his only daughter. Ah well, at times I miss that luxury. The mediocrity of this drab, vulgar and commonplace existence disgusts and oppresses me. When I am waiting for a tram with a waterproof and overshoes to save a cab fare of 35 sous, I sometimes get impatient, and those tempting words, 'If you liked,’ come into my mind. Ah! when I have a soul full of happiness, when I can think that I love and am loved, that I am realizing and carrying out the romance of my youth, that Jacques clings to me as I do to him, and that I shall remain mingled in his life and work, then it is an intoxication to answer myself: 'If I liked? But I do not like.’ I smile at my beloved poverty because it is my beloved chimera. But when I have terrible evidence, as I did to-day, that I am the dupe of a mirage, that this man has no more heart than the wood of this furniture”—and she struck with her clenched fist the table upon which she was leaning while she talked to me—“then I make a different reply to the temptation. 'If I liked?’ I repeat and I reply: 'It is true, and I am very foolish not to like!’ I shall not always be so.” “You will always be so,” I said as I took her hand again, “because this foolishness simply consists in having what you believe Jacques has not, I mean a heart. But then he has one of a sort,” I added, “and you will be of that opinion this evening or to-morrow morning.” “You do not know me,” she replied with a frown upon her pretty forehead and a tremor of hatred around her fine mouth, which had become bitter again. “He will have to humble himself and wait days and days for his pardon. Yesterday you only saw me as the weak and amorous woman. There is another side to my character, the bad side. You will find it out. There is another characteristic, too, pride; but don’t be any the less my friend,” she went on, introducing a subtle touch of melancholy into her anger. The grace of this sudden change of front brought the shadow of a sad smile to her face. She wiped away with her handkerchief two large tears, and added with a shrug of the shoulders in a childish tone which contrasted graciously, too, with the tragic discourse which had just preceded it: “I hear mother coming back. I don’t want her to see that I have been crying. As I am ashamed of lying to her, let us do so thoroughly.”