"If that's how you feel you wouldn't care about being beautiful for the sake of other people?"
"Yes and no. Not for every one—only for those I care for. We ought to be ugly for people about whom we are indifferent, for all the people we don't love—don't you think so? They would have just what they deserved then."
Denoisel began sketching again.
"How odd it is, your ideal, to wish to be dark!" he said, after a moment's silence.
"What should you like to be?"
"If I were a woman? I should like to be small and neither very fair nor very dark——"
"Auburn then?"
"And plump—Oh, as plump as a quail."
"Plump? Ah, I can breathe again. Just for a moment I was afraid of a declaration—If the light had not shown up your hair I should have forgotten you were forty."
"Oh, you don't make me out any older than I am, Renée; that is exactly my age. But do you know what yours is for me?"