"I beg your pardon! the shade was light green and the form was that of Brittany. You looked like a severe lady of yore confining in a rigid corselet breasts that have been mortified by penitence." "Yes, but you acted as if I were incorporeal and only garbed with the charms of my virtues. I warn you, Monsieur, that on any future occasion when I walk with you (quite improbable occasion!), I will put on the severest black of the severest woolen robe I have." She continued, after listlessly stirring the embers in the grate. "The pleasure in pretty robes is quite ended. I would like a uniformed costume like nuns, not too unbecoming, so as not to weary my eyes in mirrors." "Black," said Hubert, "would be agreeable, but why this renunciation?" "So that the external gayety might not make a false contrast with the darkness of my soul ... I should not have received you this evening, for I am sad and forlorn." "You promised." "That is no reason. I have had more important promises made to me which were never fulfilled. I bear no malice, only regret." "Let me love you?" "And to what purpose?" asked Sixtine, drawing herself up in her chair as if stupefied. "It will perhaps console you." "Oh! my dear, do what you wish, I am patient and passive, but I warn you, it will be the worse for you." "You are so discouraging!" Hubert gently returned. "Thus, you should have let me enter with you yesterday evening...." "Did I forbid you?" "You refused to let me." She shrugged her shoulders. "Did I forbid you to take hold of the door when I was closing it? Did I forbid you to ring if the first stratagem did not succeed? Did I forbid you to hasten after me while I slowly climbed the steps?... Yesterday, it was necessary to enter, and to-day it is necessary to leave ... because," she quickly added, "I am ill and inclined to go to bed. It is not an idealistic sight, I do not invite you to it. Your modesty would suffer, and mine perhaps. _A bientôt_, come again, do not fail to come again." Without answering such impertinences, Hubert arose and violently imprisoned her in his two arms. She closed her eyes, he kissed them; he kissed her mouth; Sixtine, with a sudden start, half lifted herself, then they fall back against the cushions, interlaced. There, profiting by the fact that one of his arms relaxed its hold to travel along the body towards the bottom of the robe, she freed herself entirely (it is the moment when complicity is necessary), and standing, with crossed arms, she ironically regarded Hubert who was still on his knees. This time it was she who walked towards him. She took his hand, led him under the little suspended lamp and silently pointed with her finger to two or three significant red spots that were swelling at the corner of her mouth. "Do not say a word, please, but go. It is perhaps a pity ... but I have no heart for love this evening.... You should have perceived it, my dear, if only by the color of my voice...." CHAPTER XXX