“I knew very well that you were false, like other women.”
Madame Jules continued to smile.
“Listen, monsieur,” she said; “if I told you the real reason, you would think it ridiculous. I do not think it false to abstain from telling things that the world would laugh at.”
“All secrets demand, in order to be told, a friendship of which I am no doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do you think me capable of jesting on noble things?”
“Yes,” she said, “you, like all the rest, laugh at our purest sentiments; you calumniate them. Besides, I have no secrets. I have the right to love my husband in the face of all the world, and I say so,—I am proud of it; and if you laugh at me when I tell you that I dance only with him, I shall have a bad opinion of your heart.”
“Have you never danced since your marriage with any one but your husband?”
“Never. His arm is the only one on which I have leaned; I have never felt the touch of another man.”
“Has your physician never felt your pulse?”
“Now you are laughing at me.”
“No, madame, I admire you, because I comprehend you. But you let a man hear your voice, you let yourself be seen, you—in short, you permit our eyes to admire you—”