“You always flatter me, Elise. In short, however you are reported to be incorruptible and unapproachable. You cannot decide whether the world is calumniating you or not; but what is it you are musing about while I am speaking to you?”
“I?”
“Yes; you are blushing and do not answer me.”
“I was trying,” said the marquise, raising her beautiful eyes brightened with an indication of growing temper, “I was trying to discover to what you could possibly have alluded, you who are so learned in mythological subjects in comparing me to Danae.”
“You were trying to guess that?” said Marguerite, laughing.
“Yes; do you not remember that at the convent, when we were solving our problems in arithmetic—ah! what I have to tell you is learned also, but it is my turn—do you not remember, that if one of the terms were given, we were to find out the other? Therefore do you guess now?”
“I cannot conjecture what you mean.”
“And yet nothing is more simple. You pretend that I am in love, do you not?”
“So it is said.”
“Very well, it is not said, I suppose, that I am in love with an abstraction. There must surely be a name mentioned in this report.”