e went
off just now. What can you mean? What do you expect from him?"

"I want--I want him to marry me. There!"

Coldly, in a softened tone, as though this avowal had brought her
nearer the level of the man whom she so much despised, she explained her
motives. The life which she led was pushing her into a situation from
which there was no way out. She had luxurious and expensive tastes,
habits of disorder which nothing could conquer and which would bring her
inevitably to poverty, both her and that good Crenmitz, who was allowing
herself to be ruined without saying a word. In three years, four years
at the outside, all would be over with them. And then the wretched
expedients, the debts, the tatters and old shoes of poor artists'
households. Or, indeed, the lover, the man who keeps a mistress--that is
to say, slavery and infamy.

"Come, come," said Jenkins. "And what of me, am I not here?"

"Anything rather than you," she exclaimed, stiffening. "No, what I
require, what I want, is a husband who will protect me from others and
from myself, who will save me from many terrible things of which I am
afraid in my moments of ennui, from the gulfs in which I feel that I may
perish, some one who will love me while I am at work and relieve my poor
old wearied fairy of her sentry duty. This man here suits my purpose,
and I thought of him from the first time I met him. He is ugly, but he
has a kind manner; then, too, he is ridiculously rich, and wealth, upon
that scale, must be amusing. Oh, I know well enough. No doubt there
is in his life some blemish that has brought him luck. All that money
cannot be made honestly. But come, truly now, Jenkins, with your hand
on that heart you so often invoke, do you think me a wife who should be
very attractive to an honest man? See: among all these young men who ask
permission as a favour to be allowed to come here, which one has dreamed
of offering me marriage? Never a single one. De Gery no more than the
rest. I am attractive, but I make men afraid. It is intelligible enough.
What can one imagine of a girl brought up as I have been, without a
mother, among my father's models and mistresses? What mistresses, _mon
Dieu_! And Jenkins for sole guardian. Oh, when I think, when I think!"

And from that far-off memory things surged up that stirred her to a
deeper wrath.

"Ah, yes, _parbleu_! I am a daughter of adventure, and this adventurer
is, of a truth, the fit husband for me."

"You mus