uld be more to my
liking: millet is _fair!_' Well, that was very pretty, but much too
refined. True love has no wit.--All this is to convey to you that
literature will not lose much by the disappearance of my disconnected
scrawls."

She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as
they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped
in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection
on Marianne's face. Little by little all disappeared save a patch of
black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in
the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:--the dust of dead
love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crepe.

Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while
a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant
joy gleamed in her eyes.

When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in
a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently:

"_Requiescat!_ See how everything ends! It is a long time since lovers
who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is new under the
sun!"

She was no longer the same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort
of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at
Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips
slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong,
without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that she now
had to say.

It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a
transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return
of letters. Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in
connection with women.

"Now, my dear," said Marianne, "I hope that you will do me the kindness
of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have
the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose."

"I confess," Lissac replied, "that I should be the worst of ingrates if
I did not forget many things in consideration of what I owe you, both in
the present and in the past. Your burned letters still shed their
fragrance!"

Marianne touched the half-consumed logs with the tip of her foot and the
debris of the paper fluttered around her shoe like little black
butterflies.

"I wish I could have destroyed the past as I have made those letters
flame! It weighs on me, it chokes me! You