“With six thousand francs of income!” cried Mademoiselle Nioche. “Do you call that caring for me? I’m afraid you know little about women. You were not galant; you were not what you might have been.”
Newman flushed a trifle fiercely. “Come!” he exclaimed “that’s rather strong. I had no idea I had been so shabby.”
Mademoiselle Nioche smiled as she took up her muff. “It is something, at any rate, to have made you angry.”
Her father had leaned both his elbows on the table, and his head, bent forward, was supported in his hands, the thin white fingers of which were pressed over his ears. In his position he was staring fixedly at the bottom of his empty glass, and Newman supposed he was not hearing. Mademoiselle Noémie buttoned her furred jacket and pushed back her chair, casting a glance charged with the consciousness of an expensive appearance first down over her flounces and then up at Newman.
“You had better have remained an honest girl,” Newman said quietly.
M. Nioche continued to stare at the bottom of his glass, and his daughter got up, still bravely smiling. “You mean that I look so much like one? That’s more than most women do nowadays. Don’t judge me yet awhile,” she added. “I mean to succeed; that’s what I mean to do. I leave you; I don’t mean to be seen in cafés, for one thing. I can’t think what you want of my poor father; he’s very comfortable now. It isn’t his fault, either. Au revoir, little father.” And she tapped the old man on the head with her muff. Then she stopped a minute, looking at Newman. “Tell M. de Bellegarde, when he wants news of me, to come and get it from me!” And she turned and departed, the white-aproned waiter, with a bow, holding the door wide open for her.
M. Nioche sat motionless, and Newman hardly knew what to say to him. The old man looked dismally foolish. “So you determined not to shoot her, after all,” Newman said presently.
M. Nioche, without moving, raised his eyes and gave him a long, peculiar look. It seemed to confess everything, and yet not to ask for pity, nor to pretend, on the other hand, to a rugged ability to do without it. It might have expressed the state of mind of an innocuous insect, flat in shape and conscious of the impending pressure of a boot-sole, and reflecting that he was perhaps too flat to be crushed. M. Nioche’s gaze was a profession of moral flatness. “You despise me terribly,” he said, in the weakest possible voice.
“Oh no,” said Newman, “it is none of my business. It’s a good plan to take things easily.”
“I made you too many fine speeches,” M. Nioche added. “I meant them at the time.”