“A serious love.”
Raising a delicate finger, with threatening gesture, to Marcel, she said—
“I am afraid you are anything but a model of virtue!”
“Do not judge me ill for having spoken so frankly. That would be neither benevolent or just. For, really, you would form a false idea of me.”
She continued, gaily—
“Come! I see that you are quite a model, after all!”
“Now, you are joking! How changing is your mood! How can one hope to get the better of you?”
“Ah! my dear sir, did you think that a single word or look would suffice to seduce me? If so, I am more rebellious than you imagined. Did you suppose that the influence of spring, amid this charming scenery, an inactive solitude, and the length of the evenings, joined to your own particular qualities, would have induced me to fall down at your feet? You are going rather too fast. My melancholy mood cannot accommodate itself to such a rapid change! There, now, don’t look so down-hearted; I am speaking to you very gently. Had I wished I might have assumed an offended attitude, for, after all, you offer me your heart without taking the slightest precaution. Still, in this out-of-the-way place one cannot help feeling nearer the simplicity of nature. It is easy to return to habits and manners that are almost primitive, even without troubling concerning forms and customs, and saying what one really thinks and feels. I will forgive you, on condition you do not recommence.”
Astonished at hearing the young woman speak in such a vivacious tone of raillery, Marcel wondered if she were really the same sorrowful languishing widow whose tender melodies were so often broken by sobs. Her face sparkled with a malicious harshness, and those caressing eyes of hers belied the coldness of her words. She offered so irritating a mixture of decency and profligacy, of modesty and sensuality, that Marcel no longer knew what to think. Suddenly the church-bell of Ars began to toll the evening Angelus, changing the trend of their thoughts. The young woman suddenly stood upright, exclaiming—
“Six o’clock already! How time passes! They will wonder what has become of me.”