Paule stroked her brother’s forehead with her soft hand.
“Alice is not the right wife for you,” she said.
“I never thought of marrying her,” was his brusque answer.
But his sister did not abandon her purpose. “She is deficient in courage,” she said. “And besides we are not in the same set.”
“Not in the same set! Because the Dulaurenses have more money than we have? In France, thank God, it is not yet the case that wealth determines social position.”
Paule was sorry she had provoked this outburst. “That is not what I meant to say,” she explained. “The people we are speaking of have a totally different outlook on life. They make a show and cannot distinguish between worthless things and those of importance. I don’t know how to make it clear to you, but I did not wish to make you cross.”
“Are you going to preach to me about the ways of the world?” asked her brother. “Before you have even seen it you pretend to judge it!”
Paule was hurt by the tone of his voice and turned away. Pouring out all the pent-up bitterness of her heart, she cried: “Do you think I cannot see behind the outward smile and the lie on the lips? These people hate us and would like to treat us with contempt. They run after you—you only—just to flatter their own vanity, and they want to have nothing to do with mother and me; we are only two poor women. But Alice is intended for Count de Marthenay, not for you!”
Even without its closing sentence this indignant speech would have had its effect. What Paule told him now bluntly, Marcel had already gathered, though not in so clear a fashion. His pride and the affection which he had for his mother and sister would have been a check upon him. But the end of Paule’s speech blotted out all that went before. The very thought of this drawing-room soldier, who had come so unexpectedly across his path, held up to him as a rival sure of victory over him, roused all his instincts as a fighter and a conqueror. He was jealous before he was even in love.