With a superb gesture Mlle. Lucienne drew herself up.
“It is not with your heart, I trust, that you judge me, M. Maxence Favoral,” she uttered.
He trembled lest he had offended her.
“I beseech you,” he began.
But she went on in a voice vibrating with emotion,
“I am not of those who basely deny their past. Your dream will never be realized. Those things are only seen on the stage. If it did realize itself, however, if the carriage with the coat-of-arms did come to the door, the companion of the evil days, the friend who offered me his month’s salary to pay my debt, would have a seat by my side.”
That was more happiness than Maxence would have dared to hope for. He tried, in order to express his gratitude, to find some of those words which always seem to be lacking at the most critical moments. But he was suffocating; and the tears, accumulated by so many successive emotions, were rising to his eyes.
With a passionate impulse, he seized Mlle. Lucienne’s hand, and, taking it to his lips, he covered it with kisses. Gently but resolutely she withdrew her hand, and, fixing upon him her beautiful clear gaze,
“Friends,” she uttered.
Her accent alone would have been sufficient to dissipate the presumptuous illusions of Maxence, had he had any. But he had none.