The girl replied in her tranquil voice:
'It is very serious; and, though it displeases you, I repeat that it is certainly necessary we should speak about it. We are two old friends and comrades, but I am afraid we should never be two lovers. So what is the good of obstinately persisting in an idea which would probably never result in happiness for either of us?'
Then Lazare burst out into a torrent of ejaculations. Was she trying to quarrel with him? She couldn't expect him to spend his whole time clinging round her neck! And, though the marriage had been put off from month to month, she knew quite well that it wasn't his fault. It was unjust of her, moreover, to say that he no longer loved her. He had loved her so warmly, and in that very room too! At this reference to the past a blush mounted to Pauline's cheeks. Her cousin was right. She recollected his passing gusts of passion, and his hot breath fanning her neck. But, ah! how far off were those delicious thrilling moments; and what an unimpassioned, brotherly friendship he manifested for her now! So it was with an expression of sadness that she replied to him:
'My poor fellow, if you really loved me, instead of arguing with me as you are doing, you would be clasping me in your arms and sobbing, and finding some very different way of persuading me.'
He turned still paler, and threw up his hands with a vague gesture of protest as he let himself fall upon a chair.
'No!' the girl went on; 'it is quite clear that you love me no longer. But it can't be helped. We are, no doubt, not suited to each other. When we were shut up here together, you were driven into thinking about me. But all your fancy vanished later on; it did not last, because there was nothing in me that could keep you to me.'
A final paroxysm of exasperation carried him off, and he swayed about in his chair as he stammered:
'Well! what do you want? What is the meaning of all this? I quietly return home, and come up here to put on my slippers, and then you suddenly fall on me, and without the least warning launch out into an extravagant harangue—"I don't love you any longer"—"We are not made for one another"—"The wedding must be broken off." Once more I ask you, what is the meaning of it all?'
Pauline, who had drawn near him, slowly answered:
'It means that you love someone else, and that I advise you to marry her.'