"He sha'n't marry this girl," Lily declared, standing up in a rage. "I'll go to Aix-les-Bains myself and I'll see this Mademoiselle." She snatched the letter from the floor to read the odious name of her rival. "I'll send her all his letters. You mightn't want to read them, but she'll want to read them. She'll read every word. She'll read how, when he was thinking of proposing to her, he was calling me his angel, his life, his soul, how he was--Oh, she'll read every word, and I'll send them to her by registered post, and then I'll know she gets them. How dare a Frenchman treat an English girl like that? How dare he? How dare he? French people think English girls have no passion. They think we're cold. Are we cold? We may not like being kissed all the time like French girls, but we're not cold. Oh, I feel I could kill him!" Sylvia interrupted her rage. "My dear, if all this fire and fury is because you're disappointed at not being married, twist him for fifty thousand francs, buy a silver casket, put his letters inside, and send them to him for a wedding-present with your good wishes. But if you love him, darling Lily, let me go and tell him the truth; if I think he's not worth it, then come away with me and be lonely with me somewhere. My beautiful thing, I can't promise you a coral island, but you shall have all my heart if you will." "Love him?" echoed Lily. "I hate him. I despise him after this, but why should he marry her?" "If you feel like that about him, I should have thought the best way to punish him would be to let the marriage proceed; to punish him further you've only to refuse yourself to him when he's married, for I'm quite sure that within six months he'll be writing to say what a mistake he made, how cold his wife is, and how much he longs to come back to you, _la jolie maîtresse de sa jeunesse, le souvenir du bon temps jadis_, and so on with the sentimental eternities of reconstructed passion." "Live with him after he's married?" Lily exclaimed. "Why, I've never even kissed a married man! I should never forgive myself." "You don't love him at all, do you?" Sylvia asked, pressing her hands down on Lily's shoulders and forcing her to look straight at her. "Laugh, my dear, laugh! Hurrah! you can't pretend you care a bit about him. Fifty thousand francs and freedom! And just when I was getting bored with Paris." "It's all very well for you, Sylvia," Lily said, resentfully, as she tried to shake off Sylvia's exuberance. "You don't want to be married. I do. I really looked forward to marrying Michael." Sylvia's face hardened. "Oh, I know you blame me entirely for that," she continued. "But it wasn't my fault, really. It was bad luck. It's no good pretending I wasn't fond of Claude. I was, and when I met him--" "Look here, don't let's live that episode over again in discussion," Sylvia said. "It belongs to the past, and I've always had a great objection to body-snatching."