“Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is forgotten, and the pain soothed.”
“I did know that it was expected: I was prepared; yet I laid out no centimes on flowers.”
“It is well—you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once ‘Paul Carl Emanuel—je te déteste, mon garçon!’—than smile an interest, look an affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don’t think you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I think your judgment is warped—that you are indifferent where you ought to be grateful—and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to be cool as your name. Don’t suppose that I wish you to have a passion for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for? Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and there is such a thing—though not within these walls, thank heaven! You are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only uttered the word—the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and views. It died in the past—in the present it lies buried—its grave is deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will then be changed—form and feeling: the mortal will have put on immortality—it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to you, Miss Lucy Snowe, is—that you ought to treat Professor Paul Emanuel decently.”
I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.
“Tell me,” he pursued, “when it is your fête-day, and I will not grudge a few centimes for a small offering.”
“You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and I did not grudge its price.”
And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.
“It lay ready in my lap this morning,” I continued; “and if Monsieur had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less interfering—perhaps I should say, too, if I had been calmer and wiser—I should have given it then.”
He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure circlet pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.
“My initials!” said he, indicating the letters in the lid. “Who told you I was called Carl David?”