"The less easy to forget," corrected madammadamehe paid no attention to the remark.
"They are the women that attach themselves in one's memory. If necessary to keep from being forgotten, they come back into one's dreams. And as life rolls on, one wonders about them,—'Is she happy? Is she miserable? Goes life well or ill with her?'"
Madame played her cards slowly, one would say, for her, prosaically.
"And there is always a pang when, as one is so wondering, the response comes,—that is, the certainty in one's heart responds,—'She is miserable, and life goes ill with her.' Then, if ever, men envy the power of God."
Madame threw over the game she was in, and began a new one.
"Such women should not be unhappy; they are too fragile, too sensitive, too trusting. I could never understand the infliction of misery upon them. I could send death to them, but not—not misfortune."
Madame, forgetting again to cheat in time, and losing her game, began impatiently to shuffle her cards for a new deal.
"And yet, do you know, Josephine, those women are the unhappy ones of life. They seem predestined to it, as others"—looking at madame's full-charmed portrait—"are predestined to triumph and victory. They"—unconscious, in his abstraction, of the personal nature of his simile—"never know how to handle their cards, and they always play a losing game."
"Ha!" came from madame, startled into an irate ejaculation.
"It is their love always that is sacrificed, their hearts always that are bruised. One might say that God himself favors the black-haired ones!"