"Because, when you are not quite so angry, I want to ask you something." He hesitated a moment. "If you learned that she cares more for another than for you, what would you do?"
Gerfaut looked at him and smiled disdainfully.
"Listen!" said he, "you have heard me storm and curse, and you took this nonsense for genuine hatred. My good fellow! do you know why I raved in such a manner? It was because, knowing my temperament, I felt the necessity of getting angry and giving vent to what was in my heart. If I had not employed this infallible remedy, the annoyance which this note caused me would have disturbed my nerves all night, and when I do not sleep my complexion is more leaden than usual and I have dark rings under my eyes."
"Fop!"
"Simpleton!"
"Why simpleton?"
"Do you take me for a dandy? Do you not understand why I wish to sleep soundly? It is simply because I do not wish to appear before her with a face like a ghost. That would be all that was needed to encourage her in her severity. I shall take good care that she does not discover how hard her last thrust has hit me. I would give you a one-hundred-franc note if I could secure for to-morrow morning your alderman's face and your complexion a la Teniers."
"Thanks, we are not masquerading just at present.
Nevertheless, all that you have said does not prove in the slightest that she loves you."
"My dear Marillac, words may have escaped me in my anger which have caused you to judge hastily. Now that I am calm and that my remedy has brought back my nervous system to its normal state, I will explain to you my real position. She is my Galatea, I her Pygmalion. 'An allegory as old as the world,' you are about to say; old or not, it is my true story. I have not yet broken the marble-virtue, education, propriety, duty, prejudices—which covers the flesh of my statue; but I am nearing my goal and I shall reach it. Her desperate resistance is the very proof of my progress. It is a terrible step for a woman to take, from No to Yes. My Galatea begins to feel the blows from my heart over her heart and she is afraid—afraid of the world, of me, of her husband, of herself, of heaven and hell. Do you not adore women who are afraid of everything? She, love another! never! It is written in all eternity that she shall be mine. What did you wish to say to me?"