"It is always the same," said he. "I get the broken head and you want to wear the bandage."
"What is that you are saying?" she replied in some confusion. "I am going because I have another visit to pay before dinner."
"Come Clementina, you cannot make believe, even if you wish it. You must understand that I cannot listen to insults and laugh, and you insult me at every moment."
"I really do not understand you; I do not know what insults or make believe you allude to," she replied, with affected innocence.
Pepe tried coaxingly to take her hat off again, but she repelled him with an imperious gesture. He then put his arm round her waist and led her to the sofa; he sat down and taking her hands kissed them again and again with passionate affection. She stood upright and would not be softened. However, he was so vehement and so humble in his endearments, that at last she snatched away her hands and exclaimed, half laughing, but still half vexed:
"Have done, have done: I am tired of your whining—like a Newfoundland dog! You are abject. I would be torn in pieces before I would humiliate myself like that."
She took her hat off, and went herself to place it on the bed.
"When a man is as much in love as I am," replied the youth somewhat abashed, "he does not regard anything as a humiliation."
"Really and truly, boy?" said she, smiling and taking him by the chin with her slender pink fingers; "I do not believe it. You are not the stuff that lovers are made of. Well, I will put you to the proof. If I told you to do a thing that might cost you your life, or, which is worse, your honour—a few years in prison—would you do it?"
"I should think so!"