"Not all the time. I shall visit my aunt, who expects me. Last year at this time there was a delightful reunion at her house. She had with her her two daughters and her three nieces with their husbands. All five women are pretty, gay, charming, and irreproachable. I shall probably find them at the beginning of next month, assembled for my aunt's birthday, and I shall remain there two days." "My friend, stay as long as it may please you. I should be inconsolable if you shortened on my account a sojourn which is so agreeable." "But you, Therese?" "I, my friend? I can take care of myself." The fire was languishing. The shadows were deepening between them. She said, in a dreamy tone: "It is true, however, that it is never prudent to leave a woman alone." He went near her, trying to see her eyes in the darkness. He took her hand. "You love me?" he said. "Oh, I assure you that I do not love another but--" "What do you mean?" "Nothing. I am thinking--I am thinking that we are separated all through the summer; that in winter you live with your parents and your friends half the time; and that, if we are to see so little of each other, it is better not to see each other at all." He lighted the candelabra. His frank, hard face was illuminated. He looked at her with a confidence that came less from the conceit common to all lovers than from his natural lack of dignity. He believed in her through force of education and simplicity of intelligence. "Therese, I love you, and you love me, I know. Why do you torment me? Sometimes you are painfully harsh." She shook her little head brusquely. "What will you have? I am harsh and obstinate. It is in the blood. I take it from my father. You know Joinville; you have seen the castle, the ceilings, the tapestries, the gardens, the park, the hunting-grounds, you have said that none better were in France; but you have not seen my father's workshop--a white wooden table and a mahogany bureau. Everything about me has its origin there. On that table my father made figures for forty years; at first in a little room, then in the apartment where I was born. We were not very wealthy then. I am a parvenu's daughter, or a conqueror's daughter, it's all the same. We are people of material interests. My father wanted to earn money, to possess what he could buy--that is, everything. I wish to earn and keep--what? I do not know--the happiness that I have--or that I have not. I have my own way of being exacting. I long for dreams and illusions. Oh, I know very well that all this is not worth the trouble that a woman takes in giving herself to a man; but it is a trouble that is worth something, because my trouble is myself, my life. I like to enjoy what I like, or think what I like. I do not wish to lose. I am like papa: I demand what is due to me. And then--" She lowered her voice: