"If you please, mademoiselle, allow me to finish.... If, as I say, you were one of those fashionable women without culture, without nobility of character, and as choke-full of prejudices as a stuffed goose is with chestnuts, I would not be surprised.... I know well what my faults are, and all that I lack in order to attract a little woman of this class.... But you, a person of your quality, that you should look upon marriage as these others do, that marriage should be in your estimation a sudden stroke of lightning, a confused heart, an irresistible passion, a handsome man with a mustache and the whole clap-trap of romance, I assure you, I cannot get over it! And when I think that we very likely are made for each other, when I think that we met, by an extraordinary chance, that we could form an intelligent sensible, clear-sighted union, and that we are not doing it, see, that almost rouses me to anger!" He struck the pavement with his umbrella. "Are you through?" Thérèse asked anxiously. "Yes, mademoiselle!" he replied distractedly. But he recanted at once. "There is but one case in which your repugnance would appear to me logical and justified, worthy of you, in a word!... That would be if, by chance, you loved another man...." Mlle. Raindal suddenly darkened. The lord of her existence surged again before her; Albârt, with his impudent smartness, his big, horse-like eyes and his ironical lips. Thérèse took in the young savant with a disdainful look and replied, her voice lowered by a sudden sadness: "I love no one, monsieur!... Or, if you prefer, I am in love with a memory...." "A memory!" Boerzell stuttered, all out of countenance.... "Ah, very good!... That is another thing.... I crave your pardon, mademoiselle." The silk of his hat was turned back; his thick lips, like those of a sea-god, were rounded into a ball and he wore such a disappointed, baffled and childish look that, despite the gravity of the circumstance, Thérèse found it difficult not to smile. "You see, monsieur!" she said heartily, "you were mistaken, if not as to my intentions, at least concerning the root of my feelings.... To prove to you that I find pleasure in your society, I ask you, if you care to, to come every now and then to see us on Sundays, as a colleague, as a friend; and I should be delighted...." "Thank you, mademoiselle," Boerzell said without enthusiasm. "Certainly, I shall come on Sundays.... Now it is unfortunate, however, that you have such ... do not take offense ... such accepted ideas, the ideas of everybody on the subject of marriage!... The dictates of the heart and love count, I admit, for much ... but they are not the only feelings in life!... Besides love, there exist sentiments of affinity, of sympathy and mutual consideration which can establish very strong links between two human beings who are all independent and superior." He noticed the darkening brow of Thérèse.