"And when I have won him," demanded Gabrielle, "what then? Do you think your precious brother will fare better with me than with the de Trémonceau?" Her calm was broken for a moment by a flash of anger. "The world is full of fools," she added. "One more or less is no great matter. I am not a Rescue Society, mademoiselle. Let your brother go his way. His best cure will be effected by the woman herself. When his money is gone, there will be no need to win him from her." The sneer sent the blood racing to the other's cheeks. She had been counting, as she realized with a pang of mortification, upon some Quixotic quality which her reading had taught lay always dormant, even in such a woman as Gabrielle de Poirier,--some innate nobility, ready to spring into activity at the bidding of such an appeal as she had just made. And, too, beneath all her anxiety, she had believed that Thaïs loved her brother, that his peril lay not so much in her making use of him and then flinging him aside, as in the existence of actual affection between him and a woman whom, even as his wife, society would not recognize. This brutal intrusion of money into the discussion, this flippant classification of Dodo with a world full of fools who flung away honor and reputation for a passing fancy, only to be flung away themselves in turn, suddenly seemed to lay clear the whole situation, in all its sordid vulgarity, and with the revelation came a white rage against this woman who was only another of the same kind. She despised herself for having stooped to ask her aid, and a fury of wounded pride blazed in her reply.