"Yes. With a view to Paris.... There's something that protects me. I firmly believe that life can do me no injury, that nothing can touch me." "You're becoming superstitious." "Oh, I was always that! Perhaps I've become more so.... Tell me, have I changed, lately?" "You're touchier." "Not so indifferent as I was?" "You're livelier, more amusing." "Used I to be a bore?" "You were a little quiet. You were always beautiful, exquisite, divine ... but rather quiet." "Perhaps it was because I minded people more then." "Don't you now?" "No, not now. They gossip just the same.... But tell me; haven't I changed more than that?" "Yes, you have: you're more jealous, more superstitious, more touchy.... What more do you want?" "Physically: haven't I changed physically?" "No." "Haven't I grown older?... Am I not getting wrinkled?" "You? Never!" "Listen. I believe I have still quite a future before me, something very different...." "In Paris?" "Perhaps.... Tell me, am I not too old?" "What for?" "For Paris.... How old do you think I am?" "Twenty-five." "You're fibbing. You know perfectly well that I'm thirty-two. Do I look thirty-two?" "Rather not!" "Tell me, don't you think India a horrible country?... Have you never been to Europe?" "No." "I was there from ten to fifteen.... Properly speaking, you're a brown native and I a white creole...." "I love my country." "Yes, because you think yourself a bit of a Solo prince.... That's your Patjaram nonsense.... As for me, I hate India, I loathe Labuwangi. I want to get away. I want to go to Paris.... Will you come too?" "No. I should never want to go...." "Not even when you reflect that there are hundreds of women in Europe whom you have never loved?" He looked at her: something in her words, in her voice, made him glance up; a crazy hysteria, which had never struck him in the old days, when she had always been the silently passionate mistress, with half-closed eyes, who always wanted to forget everything at once and to become conventional again. Something in her repelled him. He loved the soft, pliant surrender of her caresses, the smiling indolence which she used to display, but not these half-mad eyes and this purple mouth, which seemed ready to bite. She seemed to feel this, for she suddenly pushed him from her and said, brusquely: "You bore me.... I know all there is to know in you.... Go away...." But this he would not do. He did not care for futile rendez-vous and he now embraced her and solicited her.... "No," she said, curtly. "You bore me. Every one bores me here. Everything bores me." He, on his knees, put his hands about her waist and drew her to him. She, smiling a little, became slightly more yielding, rumpling his hair nervously with her hand. A carriage pulled up in front of the house. "Hark!" she said. "It's Mrs. van Does." "How soon she's back!" "I expect she's sold nothing." "Then it'll cost you a ten-guilder note." "I dare say."