"Does it depend upon me to do it?"
"Yes, if you do not attempt to disturb the equilibrium of your faculties. You cannot persuade me that exhaustion is the proper remedy for fever: it is simply its fatal result."
"What febrifuge do you suggest, then?"
"I don't know; marriage, perhaps."
"Horror!" cried Laurent, bursting with laughter.
And he added, still laughing, and without any very clear idea of the source of that corrective:
"Unless I marry you, Thérèse. Ah! that is an idea, on my word!"
"Charming," she rejoined, "but altogether impossible."
This reply impressed Laurent by its conclusive tranquillity, and what he had just said by way of jest suddenly assumed the guise of a buried dream, as if the operation had taken place in his mind. That powerful and ill-fated mind was so constituted that the word impossible was all that was necessary to make him desire a thing, and that was just the word Thérèse had uttered.
Instantly his inclination to fall in love with her reawoke, and with it his suspicions, his jealousy, and his anger. Hitherto the spell of friendship had lulled and, as it were, intoxicated him; of a sudden he became bitter, and cold as ice.