She said this with a sly air which was meant to say: "Be easy and don't be too presumptuous. Don't deceive yourself, for you will get nothing more than the others."
He replied:
"That is what you might call warning your guests of the perils that await them here. Thank you, Madame: I greatly admire your mode of procedure."
She had opened the way for him to speak of herself, and he availed himself of it. He began by paying her compliments and found that she was fond of them; then he aroused her woman's curiosity by telling her what was said of her in the different houses that he frequented. She was rather uneasy and could not conceal her desire for further information, although she affected much indifference as to what might be thought of herself and her tastes. He drew for her a charming portrait of a superior, independent, intelligent, and attractive woman, who had surrounded herself with a court of eminent men and still retained her position as an accomplished member of society. She disclaimed his compliments with smiles, with little disclaimers of gratified egotism, all the while taking much pleasure in the details that he gave her, and in a playful tone kept constantly asking him for more, questioning him artfully, with a sensual appetite for flattery.
As he looked at her, he said to himself, "She is nothing but a child at heart, just like all the rest of them"; and he went on to finish a pretty speech in which he was commending her love for art, so rarely found among women. Then she assumed an air of mockery that he had not before suspected in her, that playfully tantalizing manner that seems inherent in the French. Mariolle had overdone his eulogy; she let him know that she was not a fool.
"Mon Dieu!" she said, "I will confess to you that I am not quite certain whether it is art or artists that I love."
He replied: "How could one love artists without being in love with art?"
"Because they are sometimes more comical than men of the world."
"Yes, but they have more unpleasant failings."
"That is true."