He had come to this. He, who did not tolerate the slightest peccadillo among the shopwomen, who turned them out for the least caprice, found himself reduced to imploring one of them not to go away, not to abandon him in his misery! He held the door against her, ready to forgive her everything, to shut his eyes, if she merely deigned to lie. And he spoke the truth, he had quite reformed; he had long since given up Clara and had ceased to visit at Madame Desforges's house, where Bouthemont now reigned supreme, pending the opening of the new establishment, The Four Seasons, which was already filling the newspapers with its advertisements. "Tell me, must I go on my knees?" he repeated, almost choked by suppressed tears. She signed to him to cease speaking, herself quite unable to conceal her emotion, deeply affected by his suffering passion. "You are wrong, sir, to agitate yourself in this way," she at last replied. "I assure you that all these wicked reports are untrue. That poor fellow you saw just now is no more guilty than I am." She said this with her brave, frank air, looking with her bright eyes straight into his face. "Very good, I believe you," he murmured. "I'll not dismiss any of your comrades, since you take all these people under your protection. But why, then, do you repulse me, if you love no one else?" A sudden constraint, an anxious bashfulness came upon the young girl. "You love some one, do you not?" he resumed, in a trembling voice. "Oh! you may speak out; I have no claim on your affections. Do you love any one?" She turned very red, her heart was in her mouth, and she felt all falsehood impossible in the presence of the emotion which was betraying her, the repugnance for lying which made the truth appear in her face in spite of all. "Yes," she at last confessed, feebly. "But I beg you to let me go, sir, you are torturing me." She was now suffering in her turn. Was it not enough to have to defend herself against him? Must she even fight against herself, against the gust of tenderness which sometimes took away all her courage? When he spoke to her like this, when she saw him such a prey to emotion, so overcome, she hardly knew why she still refused; and it was only afterwards that, in the depths of her healthy, girlish nature, she found the pride and prudence which maintained her intact in her virtuous resolutions. Mouret gave way to a gesture of gloomy discouragement. He could not understand her. He turned towards his table, took up some papers and then at once laid them down again, saying: "I will detain you no longer, mademoiselle; I cannot keep you against your will." "But I don't wish to go away," replied she, smiling. "If you believe me to be innocent, I will remain. One ought always to believe a woman to be virtuous, sir. There are numbers who are so, I assure you."