Mr Murk had got to his feet.
“Mademoiselle Legrand,” he said, “you are all of Heloïse, I think, without the erudition. Now, I am not orthodox; yet I think your description of the Virgin very prettily blasphemous. And what has become of the serpent and the globe of liquid purple? You can explain your picture, I see, to accommodate the views of its critics. I admire you very much, and I bid you good day.”
He was going. She leapt across his path and stayed him. A bright spot of colour had sprung to her cheek.
“You will leave me?” she cried hoarsely. “You shall not go, thinking me a liar!”
“No more than the author of ‘Julie,’” he said, drily and stubbornly. “You have the fine gift of romance, but I don’t like your vision.”
“It is the truth! I give you but one of the hundred impressions it made upon me.”
“Very well. It is a bad selection, so far as I am concerned.”
“How could I know—you, that have traded upon my confidence! You tempt me and throw me aside. I will not be so shamed—I, that am no longer obscure—whose every word is worth——”
“As much as one of M. Voltaire’s, no doubt. He may value his commercially, at ten sous or fifty. What then? You have the popular ear. Do you want to make your profit of me also?”
She twined her fingers together, and held them backwards against her bosom.