“Am I disturbing you?” “Perhaps.” “How you receive me! What have I done, my dear Marguerite?” “My dear friend, you have done nothing. I am ill; I must go to bed, so you will be good enough to go. It is sickening not to be able to return at night without your making your appearance five minutes afterward. What is it you want? For me to be your mistress? Well, I have already told you a hundred times, No; you simply worry me, and you might as well go somewhere else. I repeat to you to-day, for the last time, I don’t want to have anything to do with you; that’s settled. Good-bye. Here’s Nanine coming in; she can light you to the door. Good-night.” Without adding another word, or listening to what the young man stammered out, Marguerite returned to the room and slammed the door. Nanine entered a moment after. “Now understand,” said Marguerite, “you are always to say to that idiot that I am not in, or that I will not see him. I am tired out with seeing people who always want the same thing; who pay me for it, and then think they are quit of me. If those who are going to go in for our hateful business only knew what it really was they would sooner be chambermaids. But no, vanity, the desire of having dresses and carriages and diamonds carries us away; one believes what one hears, for here, as elsewhere, there is such a thing as belief, and one uses up one’s heart, one’s body, one’s beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after having ruined others and ruined one’s self.” “Come, come, madame, be calm,” said Nanine; “your nerves are a bit upset to-night.” “This dress worries me,” continued Marguerite, unhooking her bodice; “give me a dressing-gown. Well, and Prudence?” “She has not come yet, but I will send her to you, madame, the moment she comes.” “There’s one, now,” Marguerite went on, as she took off her dress and put on a white dressing-gown, “there’s one who knows very well how to find me when she is in want of me, and yet she can’t do me a service decently. She knows I am waiting for an answer. She knows how anxious I am, and I am sure she is going about on her own account, without giving a thought to me.” “Perhaps she had to wait.” “Let us have some punch.” “It will do you no good, madame,” said Nanine. “So much the better. Bring some fruit, too, and a paté or a wing of chicken; something or other, at once. I am hungry.” Need I tell you the impression which this scene made upon me, or can you not imagine it? “You are going to have supper with me,” she said to me; “meanwhile, take a book. I am going into my dressing-room for a moment.” She lit the candles of a candelabra, opened a door at the foot of the bed, and disappeared.