Marguerite, I am not going to take a roundabout way of saying
what I really want to say. Honestly, do you care for me a little?"

"A great deal."

"Then why did you deceive me?"

"My friend, if I were the Duchess So and So, if I had two hundred
thousand francs a year, and if I were your mistress and had another
lover, you would have the right to ask me; but I am Mlle. Marguerite
Gautier, I am forty thousand francs in debt, I have not a penny of my
own, and I spend a hundred thousand francs a year. Your question becomes
unnecessary and my answer useless."

"You are right," I said, letting my head sink on her knees; "but I love
you madly."

"Well, my friend, you must either love me a little less or understand me
a little better. Your letter gave me a great deal of pain. If I had
been free, first of all I would not have seen the count the day before
yesterday, or, if I had, I should have come and asked your forgiveness
as you ask me now, and in future I should have had no other lover but
you. I fancied for a moment that I might give myself that happiness for
six months; you would not have it; you insisted on knowing the means.
Well, good heavens, the means were easy enough to guess! In employing
them I was making a greater sacrifice for you than you imagine. I might
have said to you, 'I want twenty thousand francs'; you were in love with
me and you would have found them, at the risk of reproaching me for it
later on. I preferred to owe you nothing; you did not understand the
scruple, for such it was. Those of us who are like me, when we have any
heart at all, we give a meaning and a development to words and things
unknown to other women; I repeat, then, that on the part of Marguerite
Gautier the means which she used to pay her debts without asking you for
the money necessary for it, was a scruple by which you ought to profit,
without saying anything. If you had only met me to-day, you would be too
delighted with what I promised you, and you would not question me as to
what I did the day before yesterday. We are sometimes obliged to buy the
satisfaction of our souls at the expense of our bodies, and we suffer
still more, when, afterward, that satisfaction is denied us."

I listened, and I gazed at Marguerite with admiration. When I thought
that this marvellous creature, whose feet I had once longed to kiss, was
willing to let me take my place in her thoughts, my part in her life,
and that I was not yet content with wh