"You know very well, my adored Bijou, that everything I possess is and will be yours. My will is already made, in which I leave everything to you, even if you do not become my wife."
"Yes, but she always says a will could be torn up."
"If your grandmamma would prefer it, I could make it over to you in a marriage settlement."
Bijou laughed.
"Ah! she would imagine, then, that we might be divorced, and a divorce does away with all things—"
"But, supposing I make out in the marriage contract that the half of what I possess now is really yours, and supposing I made over the rest to you, only reserving to myself the interest?"
Bijou shook her head, and then, with a pretty movement of playful affection, she threw her soft arms round M. de Clagny's neck, and said:
"I don't want you to give me anything but happiness, and I am sure you will give me plenty of that. I hope you will live a very, very long time, and it would not matter to me, when I am old, if I were to find myself poor again, comparatively speaking."
"And I," he said, covering Denyse's face and hair with kisses, "I could not go on living with the thought that I might be taken away without your future being provided for in the way in which I should wish it to be."
"Don't talk about all those things," she murmured. "I want to think that I shall never be separated from you—never, never!"