sumed in his eyes the relish of a caprice
and an adventure. And then, that bitter remark, spoken in the course of
their light Parisian gossip, whetted his curiosity still further and
awoke, perhaps, all the latent force of a passion formerly suddenly
severed.

He was seated on an ottoman beside Marianne, gazing into the young
woman's clear eyes, his hand endeavoring to seize a white hand that
nimbly eluded his grasp. The movement of his hands suggested the embrace
that his feelings prompted.

Marianne suddenly looked him full in the face and curtly said, in a tone
of raillery, that suggested a past that refused to reopen an account for
the future:

"Oh! oh! but is that making love, my friend?"

Lissac smiled.

"Come," she said, "nonsense! That is a romance whose pages you have
already often turned over."

"The romance of my life," whispered Lissac in Marianne's ear.

"The more reason that it should not be read again. It is true there are
books one never reads but once. And for that reason, probably, one never
forgets them."

She rose abruptly, threw the stump of her cigarette into the fire and
looked with a bright, penetrating glance, into Lissac's surprised eyes.

"Ah! it is a long while, you see, since you spoke laughingly--we have
both heartily laughed at it--of the 'caprices of Marianne.' Do you know
what I am, my dear Guy? Yes, where is the mad creature who was formerly
your mistress? Abandoned to dark, profound and incurable _ennui_, I yawn
my life away, as some one said, I yawn it away even to the point of
dislocating my jaw. The days seem dull to me, people stupid, books
insipid, while fools seem idiots and witty people fools. It is to have
the blues, if you will, or rather to have the grays, to hate colorless
objects, to be weary of the commonplace, to thirst for the impossible. A
thirst that cannot be allayed, let me add. The pure, fresh spring that
should slake my thirst has not yet gushed."

She talked in a dry, bitter tone, with a smile that frequently gave way
to slight outbreaks of convulsive laughter almost as if she were
attacked with a fit of coughing. From time to time, she blew away a
cloud of smoke that escaped from her lips, for she had resumed her
cigarette, or with the tip of her nail struck her papelito, knocking the
ashes on the carpet.

Moved and greatly puzzled, but no longer thinking of the temptation of a
moment before, Guy looked at her and nodded his head gravely, like a
ph