"It is not the position you are accustomed to."
The apartment in which she was living was certainly neither like the one in the Rue Bara in Paris, nor that of the Molay-Norrois on the banks of the Isère.
"I shall get used to it," she said, smiling. "It is nothing. I have no need to wear the garb of a martyr."
The clothes she was wearing suited her so well, bringing out with such brilliance the beauty of her complexion, that he wanted to protest against this. He had lost the right to do so, and he therefore refrained.
"My children's education," she continued, "will suffer in no wise from this reduction. I have promised myself and I shall keep my word. See, I have already begun. I correct Marie Louise's exercises, and I am teaching her her lessons."
"You give yourself much trouble."
"It gives me something to do. One must be occupied with other people when one's own life no longer has a purpose."
She had risen. He believed that she was asking him to go. But she opened the drawer of a writing-table and came over to him to give him a packet, carefully folded, which he recognized.
"I asked you to come back with me so that I could give you M. Derize's note-books. I thank you for having given them to me. I have kept them a very long time, but you did not ask me for them."
He bowed without speaking.