"That is why I love you, Sixtine, and why I shall always love you!" "Please, rise and let go my hands!" "Let me keep them, let me love you. Ah! you are not indifferent, it is not possible." "But," returned Sixtine, "I am surprised.... You tell me a very curious and interesting anecdote to which I listen without distrust, and it ends with a declaration.... It is very unexpected ... Come, sit down and let us talk peacefully.... I do not wish to discourage you, and I really want to be sincere.... If I loved you I would say so, it would even be a fitting occasion.... Frankly, I have not felt that little emotion, that tiny nothing.... Then how say it, I am very inexperienced ... It perhaps will come another time. Come, you will recommence and it will merely be a deferred pleasure.... I am quite willing to love.... My soul yearns for something.... It may be won, but you must conquer it.... How? That is your affair.... And then, you know that if I loved it would be for eternity.... There can be no casualness where such bonds are concerned. It is necessary to know each other, to estimate each other, to tell something of one's past life, to fathom characters, to analyze tastes. We are not children.... All this...." "Ah! I am a fool," Sixtine was saying to herself during the pauses of her speech. "But I do not withdraw my hand, I only seem to ... So stirred, I would not wish to admit how delicious it has been.... No, it is an avowal.... Unexpected? I was waiting for it and would have been pained and surprised had it not come.... He is there, at my knees, at my knees: Oh! remain thus.... If I were he I should speak quite differently, but I like these doubts, these supplications. He is going to implore me again, again, again.... Do I love him? I am able to love him, at least I am not far from it, I feel that a certain word, a certain gesture ... and I would be in his arms, but will he say the word? Will he make the gesture?... Oh! yes! I have experienced something undefinable.... Yes, but I am not at such a point of ignorance.... Can all this be recovered, such moments?... Believe me, it is true, true, true, I want to love.... Well, take it, but be sure to take it. The word is too hard. My God, perhaps I am discouraging him. So much the worse, it will be the test.... Oh! to be fixed, to be bound forever! To him? I do not know, but if he wished it!... He is quite proper, but a little cold, and then, I already know him; he is capable of a profound sentiment.... What! he is rising, he abandons my hand, he goes to sit down on that chair, so far, so far from me.... Well, it is finished, and I am deceived. Let us wait." "I believe I was wrong," replied Entragues, "to let you speak so long. You have recovered possession of your natural calm and now you are unattainable."