“I?—nothing. I would simply say, ‘Mlle. Célestin, M. Désiré has been called away to the death-bed of an aunt in the country. She will leave him her entire fortune if he marries at once and according to her desires.’ Then I would say, ‘The girl upon whom his aunt has fixed——’”
“Oh, rubbish! I could do that myself. Do you think if I wanted to I could not kick Célestin over in half an hour? You do not understand. She is like no one else. She is like a child. I cannot hurt her. She would haunt me forever, she and that lark. Oh, why did I ever meet her? But for her I would have been back days ago out of this abominable Rue de Perpignan. If it had not been for her, I would never have come here at all. She drove me on to this stupidity, I don’t know why.”
“If,” said Gaillard rather stiffly, “you still love this girl so much——”
“But I don’t. I mean this: I thought I was in love with her, and, somehow, now everything seems to have gone to pieces all at once; the pleasure went out of my life all at once. I am lingering on in this infernal part of the town like a thing with a broken back. I don’t know what I am to do.”
“I know,” said Gaillard.
“What?”
“Take a little cottage in the country and put your Célestin there with her lark.”
“Yes, I might do that; only I will have to go there every day or live there.”
“In the name of Heaven, why?”
“Because it will break her heart if I leave her. I tell you you do not know her. She has wound herself round me.”