"Oh, now, you know I love you as a good friend. Tell me, when will you come again?"
"Tomorrow night, unless it is inconvenient for you."
"Not at all."
"Then, au revoir."
Their lips met.
"And above all, don't think about Canon Docre," she said, turning and shaking her finger at him threateningly as she went out.
"Devil take you and your reticence," he said to himself, closing the door after her.
[!-- Page 201 --]CHAPTER XVI]
"When I think," said Durtal to himself the next morning, "that in bed, at the moment when the most pertinacious will succumbs, I held firm and refused to yield to the instances of Hyacinthe wishing to establish a footing here, and that after the carnal decline, at that instant when annihilated man recovers—alas!—his reason, I supplicated her, myself, to continue her visits, why, I simply cannot understand myself. Deep down, I have not got over my firm resolution of breaking with her, but I could not dismiss her like a cocotte. And," to justify his inconsistency, "I hoped to get some information about the canon. Oh, on that subject I am not through with her. She's got to make up her mind to speak out and quit answering me by monosyllables and guarded phrases as she did yesterday.