"No, indeed; I said what I thought."
"Then you were mistaken, and you are really in love! are you quite sure of it?"
"Oh! don't be angry; great Heaven! I am not sure enough for that. Thoughts of love have passed through my head, through my senses, if you choose. Have you so little experience that you considered it impossible?"
"I am old enough to have had experience," she replied; "but I have lived alone for a long while. I have had no experience of certain situations. Does that surprise you? It is true, none the less. I am very simple-minded, although I have been deceived, like everybody else! You have told me a hundred times that you respected me too much to look upon me as a woman, for the reason that your love for women was altogether gross. So I believed that I was in no danger from the outrage of your desires; and of all that I esteemed in you, your sincerity upon that point was what I esteemed most highly. I allowed myself to become interested in your destiny with the greater freedom, because, you remember, we said to each other, laughing, but with serious meaning: 'Between two persons, of whom one is an idealist and the other a materialist, there is the Baltic Sea.'"
"I said it in all sincerity, and I walked confidently along the shore on my side, without an idea of crossing; but it happened that the ice would not bear. Is it my fault that I am twenty-four, and that you are beautiful?"
"Am I still beautiful? I hoped not."
"I cannot say; I did not think so at first, and then, one fine day, you seemed beautiful to me. So far as you are concerned, it is involuntary, I know that perfectly well; but it was involuntary on my part, too, my feeling this fascination, so involuntary that I fought against it and tried to divert my mind from it. I rendered unto Satan what belongs to Satan, that is to say, my poor soul, and I brought here unto Cæsar only what belongs to Cæsar,—my respect and my silence. But for eight or ten days this accursed emotion has reappeared in my dreams. It vanishes as soon as I am with you. On my word of honor, Thérèse, when I see you, when you speak to me, I am calm, I no longer remember that I cried out for you in a moment of frenzy, which I cannot understand myself. When I speak of you, I say that you are not young, or that I don't like the color of your hair. I declare that you are my comrade, that is to say, my brother, and I feel when I say it that I am perfectly loyal. And then a few puffs of spring surprise the winter in my idiotic heart, and I fancy that it is you who blow them. And it is you, in truth, Thérèse, with your adoration of what you call real love! That sets me thinking, whatever kind of love one may have!"
"I think that you are mistaken, I never speak of love."
"No, I know it. You follow a rigid rule in that respect. You have read somewhere that even to speak of love was to give it or take it; but your silence is most eloquent, your reticence gives one the fever, and your excessive prudence has a diabolical fascination."
"In that case, let us meet no more," said Thérèse.