"Hoped what? to marry me?"
"No—yes! I don't know; he might have hoped in a vague sort of way—I don't know what."
"And do you think that I can endure the idea of causing your unhappiness, no matter how involuntarily on my part?"
"It is not in your power to alter what exists."
Bijou appeared to be turning something over in her mind.
"Supposing I were to marry," she said at last abruptly. And then hiding her face in her hands she said in a broken voice: "M. de Clagny wants to marry me."
"M. de Clagny!" exclaimed Jeanne, stupefied, "why, he's sixty!"
"I said no; I will say yes, though."
"You are mad!"
"Not the least bit in the world! I am practical. The remedy is perhaps a trifle hard, but what is to be done? I love you so, Jeanne, that the idea of seeing you unhappy makes me wretched!"