"You love me? You love me?"
"I love you!—Ah!" she said, "how unhappy you would be, nevertheless, if I told you aloud some day in one of the lobbies of the Assembly what you ask me to repeat here in a whisper."
"I should prefer that to losing you and to knowing that you did not love me."
"He is telling the truth, however, the great fool!" cried Marianne, laughing.
"The real, sincere, profound truth!"
He drew her to him, seated on the vulgar divan where Simon Kayser was wont to display his paradoxes, and encircling her waist with both arms he felt her yielding form beneath her satin gown, and wished her to bend her fair face to his lips that were craving a kiss.
Marianne took his face between her soft hands, and looking at him with an odd smile, tender and ironical at once, at this big simpleton who was completely dominated by her mocking tenderness, she said:
"You are just the same Sulpice!"—as she spoke, she bent over him engagingly, and laughed merrily while he kissed her.