"Is it true what you have just said? Do you still remember that moment of madness? Can you think of it without anger?"
"Yes," she answered, gazing full at him with her beautiful blue eyes, "I think of it without anger," and then, in such a low voice that he could scarcely hear it, she murmured, "and I do think of it all the time!" Then, with a sudden change of expression, she began again hurriedly: "It is you who must forget now; you must forget at once—what I ought never to have said to you! Please forget it! Do as I ask you, for my sake!"
"Forget? How do you think that I can forget? You know well enough that it is absolutely impossible!"
"You must, though!" she persisted. "Yes, you must say to yourself that you—that we have had a dream—a very bright, happy dream,—one of those sort from which one wakes up happy, and, at the same time, troubled; a dream in which one has a vision of beautiful things, which disappear, and which we cannot possibly define. Have you never had such dreams? One cannot, no matter how much one tries, remember all about them; and yet—one likes them."
Her voice, with its caressing intonation, completely unnerved the young man. He had taken his seat again mechanically at the table, and, without replying, he looked up at Bijou, his eyes full of tears.
She came nearer, and said in a beseeching tone:
"Ah! please don't, if you only knew how wretched it makes me—" and then she added abruptly: "and if it is any consolation to you—you can say to yourself that you are not the only one to suffer—for I do, too."
"Is it really, really true?" he asked, bewildered with his happiness.
Denyse did not answer. She had just noticed on the table a letter, which Giraud had been finishing when she entered the room.
"I was writing to my brother," he said, following the direction of her eyes, "and instead of telling him about my pupil, and my occupations, and, in short, about such things as, in my position of life, I ought to confine myself to, I have only told him about you."