“Why? I don’t see why.”
“You have told me, yet you would hide what I know from that angel of light. That is not as it should be. Take it as a man. How would you like Mlle. Célestin to deceive you? The thing is impossible, but, still——”
“Perhaps you are right; and I wish I had never met her.”
Garnier frowned again.
“You do not love her, then?”
“Oh, yes; I do. It is not that, but my mother, and all the people I know. Not that I care a button—not a button; let them all go to the devil.”
“Ah, now you speak like a man! And will you tell Célestin all that you have told to me?”
“I will. I will tell her this evening.”
But when evening came, and he sat alone with Célestin on the couch in the lamplight, and when he took her hand saying “I want to tell you something; I ought to have told it to you before,” the words dried up; he could not tell her of his position in the world; besides, he knew her inevitable answer, “What matter, so long as we love each other?” It always came when difficulties arose—if the beef was understewed or the wine sour, if the cats kept them awake or if the door of Dodor’s cage got jammed.
“Célestin, I ought to have told you before; but do you know that, though we live here in this atelier and are happy enough, God knows—do you know that I am—awfully poor?”