“You don’t really believe I’m unfaithful at all. You’re just making fun of me.”
“Did you bring her here?”
“Eh?... What’s that? Here? Maude Knox here?”
“And why not? Since you are not fidèle.”
“But you don’t understand. Maude Knox is an American girl. She wouldn’t—I couldn’t—”
“Oh, it is so?... Then these American girls, they do not love. They are stone or wood, is it so?... I do not onderstan’ these American girls.” She was delightfully disgusted. “Sometime I shall cross the ocean to observe these girls. It will be ver’ droll. America mus’ be a ver’ droll, ver’ serious country—where the girls do not love.”
“They do love. Of course they love.”
“Well, then, Why do you make such astonishment when I speak that she comes here?”
He waggled his hand helplessly, and she, perceiving that she was teasing him, put on greater pretense of seriousness.
“Ah, I see,” she said. “The American girl she say, ‘I love,’ and then she enter into the convent.... She goes in the jardin and see the bud about to blossom, and she cover it weeth a veil. Is it not? Oh, such love as thees! It is the love of the ice for the snow.”