ie, you surely cannot have
forgotten our little room, in the Rue des Martyrs?"

What he had become, for her, since his death, she could not have said,
so alien was it to her beliefs, so contrary to her reason, and so
antiquated, ridiculous and obsolete did the words which would have
expressed her feeling seem to her. But from some remote inherited
instinct, or more likely from certain tales which she had heard in her
childhood, she derived a confused idea that he was of the number of
those dead who in the days of old were wont to torment the living, and
were exorcised by the priests; for upon thinking of him she
instinctively began to make the sign of the cross, and she checked
herself only that she might not seem ridiculous.

Ligny, seeing her melancholy and distracted, blamed himself for his
harsh and useless words, while at the very moment of reproaching
himself for them he followed them by others equally harsh and equally
useless.

"And yet you told me it was not true!"

She replied, fervently:

"Because, don't you see, I wanted it not to be true."

She added:

"Oh, my darling, since I've been yours, I swear to you that I've not
belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I should have
found it impossible."

Like the young of animals, she had need of gaiety. The wine, which shone
in her glass like liquid amber, was a joy to her eyes, and she moistened
her tongue with it with luxurious pleasure. She took an interest in the
dishes set before her, and especially in the _pommes de terre
soufflees_, like golden blisters. Next she watched the people lunching
at the tables in the dining-room, attributing to them, according to
their appearance, ridiculous opinions or grotesque passions. She noticed
the ill-natured glances which the women directed toward her, and the
efforts of the men to appear handsome and important. And she gave
utterance to a general reflection:

"Robert, have you noticed that people are never natural? They do not say
a thing because they think it. They say it because they think it is
what they ought to say. This habit makes them very wearisome. And it is
extremely rare to find anyone who is natural. You, you are natural."

"Well, I don't think I'm guilty of posing."

"You pose like the rest. But you pose in your own character. I can see
perfectly well when you are trying to surprise and impress me."

She spoke to him of himself and, led back by an involuntary train of
thou