"Ah, Gaston," she answered, and in protest raised her slender fingers, "let us have no more heroics. We are not well fitted for them, you and I."
"So it would appear," the Duc de Puysange conceded, not without sulkiness.
"Let us be friends," she pleaded. "Remember, it was fifteen years ago I made the grave mistake of marrying a very charming man—"
"Merci!" cried the Duke.
"—and I did not know that I was thereby denying myself the pleasure of his acquaintance. I have learned too late that marrying a man is only the most civil way of striking him from one's visiting-list." The Duchess hesitated. "Frankly, Gaston, I do not regret the past month."
"It has been adorable!" sighed the Duke.
"Yes," she admitted; "except those awkward moments when you would insist on making love to me."
"But no, madame," cried he, "it was precisely—"
"O my husband, my husband!" she interrupted, with a shrug of the shoulders; "why, you do it so badly!"
The Duc de Puysange took a short turn about the apartment. "Yet I married you," said he, "at sixteen—out of a convent!"