“I am not loved,” she said, giving him one of those sly oblique glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are trying to torment.

“Not loved!” cried Nathan.

“No; you are too occupied with other things. What am I to you in the midst of them? forgotten on the least occasion! Yesterday I came to the Bois and you were not here—”

“But—”

“I had put on a new dress expressly to please you; you did not come; where were you?”

“But—”

“I did not know where. I went to Madame d’Espard’s; you were not there.”

“But—”

“That evening at the Opera, I watched the balcony; every time a door opened my heart was beating!”

“But—”