"Well, then, mademoiselle, have you a wish quite ready this time, so that you will not be taken unawares?"
"Yes, certainly, I have one; but it can never be realised."
"Ah! I dare not ask you what."
"I should like to be quite different from what I am," she replied, very gently. "Yes, I should like to be a very pretty girl, in quite humble circumstances, so that I need not be obliged to go into society, and so that I could marry just whom I liked. I should like to be, in fact, happy according to my own idea of things, without troubling anything about social prejudices and conventionalities."
"Why should you wish that?" he asked, in a voice that trembled slightly.
"So that I should have the right to love anyone who loved me. I mean, openly; without having to keep it to myself." And then she added, in a very low voice, "And without reproaching myself for it."
She was walking quite close to him, so close, that their shoulders touched at every step.
Giraud was quite agitated with conflicting emotions.
"You say that—as if—as if—you did care for someone?" he stammered out.
He knew that she had turned her face towards him, but she did not speak.