She looked at Sulpice with her winsome, sidelong glance, curling her lovely pink lips that he had kissed so many times.
"Then you love that man?"
"I! not at all, only it is flattering to me to have him return like that, just like some penitent little boy."
"I do not understand—"
"Parbleu! you are not a woman, that is all that that proves!—It is irritating to our self-love to see people too promptly accept the dismissal one gives them. What! Don't they suffer? Don't they say anything? Don't they complain? Monsieur de Rosas comes back to me, that proves that he was hurt, and I triumph. Now, do you understand?"
"And—that joy that I observed is—?"
"It is because Monsieur de Rosas is in Paris."
"And you don't love him? You don't love him?" asked Vaudrey, clasping Marianne's hands in his.
She laughed and said:
"I do not love him in the least."