“I don’t think we shall do any work to-day,” I said to her, “little Blue Duchess, and I am much afraid it will not be for the same motive which made the other Duchess say, a hundred years ago, that life is too short to have one’s portrait painted; but I will say it is too short for the troubles you are making for yourself. You have been crying, confess?” “No,” she replied evasively. “But I did not close my eyes all night. I did not even go to bed.” “Jacques will scold you when I tell him of your conduct, and I warn you that I shall report it.” “Jacques,” she said, knitting the blonde bar of her pretty lashes. “He looks after me well, does Jacques,” and she shrugged her shoulders as she repeated: “He looks after me well!” “You are again unjust,” I said with my heart pierced by remorse at my own tender hypocrisy. “You ought to have heard him talk about you last evening after dinner!” “Last evening?” she replied, raising her head and her drooping shoulders with a movement which shamed me. It betrayed such passionate gratitude. “Did you see Jacques last evening then?” “He stopped to dinner,” I said, “and we separated at an impossible hour after midnight.” “Is that true?” she asked in an almost raucous voice; and she supplicatingly said: “Tell me that it is true and I will believe you. But don’t lie to me. From you it would be too horrible.” She seized my hand in hers as she said: “Do not be offended. I know that you would not lend yourself to deceive me and that you are my friend. I will explain it to you now how I heard that Bonnivet, you know, the husband of that horrible woman, was away. Then I got the idea into my head that they would take advantage of his absence, Jacques and her, to spend the evening together; I freed myself by lying to my mother, the first time I have done so, and I wrote a note to him asking him to dine with me. I was well punished for my two lies. He did not reply. Repeat to me that I was foolish, that he was with you last evening, not with her. O God! let me weep. It does me so much good. Oh, thank God he was not with her, not with her!”