e."

He went near her, trying to see her eyes in the darkness. He took her
hand.

"You love me?" he said.

"Oh, I assure you that I do not love another but--"

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. I am thinking--I am thinking that we are separated all through
the summer; that in winter you live with your parents and your friends
half the time; and that, if we are to see so little of each other, it is
better not to see each other at all."

He lighted the candelabra. His frank, hard face was illuminated. He
looked at her with a confidence that came less from the conceit common
to all lovers than from his natural lack of dignity. He believed in her
through force of education and simplicity of intelligence.

"Therese, I love you, and you love me, I know. Why do you torment me?
Sometimes you are painfully harsh."

She shook her little head brusquely.

"What will you have? I am harsh and obstinate. It is in the blood. I
take it from my father. You know Joinville; you have seen the
castle, the ceilings, the tapestries, the gardens, the park, the
hunting-grounds, you have said that none better were in France; but you
have not seen my father's workshop--a white wooden table and a mahogany
bureau. Everything about me has its origin there. On that table my
father made figures for forty years; at first in a little room, then in
the apartment where I was born. We were not very wealthy then. I am a
parvenu's daughter, or a conqueror's daughter, it's all the same. We are
people of material interests. My father wanted to earn money, to possess
what he could buy--that is, everything. I wish to earn and keep--what?
I do not know--the happiness that I have--or that I have not. I have my
own way of being exacting. I long for dreams and illusions. Oh, I know
very well that all this is not worth the trouble that a woman takes in
giving herself to a man; but it is a trouble that is worth something,
because my trouble is myself, my life. I like to enjoy what I like, or
think what I like. I do not wish to lose. I am like papa: I demand what
is due to me. And then--"

She lowered her voice:

"And then, I have--impulses! Now, my dear, I bore you. What will you
have? You shouldn't have loved me."

This language, to which she had accustomed him, often spoiled his
pleasure. But it did not alarm him. He was sensitive to all that she
did, but not at all to what she said; and he attached no importance to
a woman's words. Talking little himsel