"You came to ask me to return them?"
"I have been, you must admit, very considerate, not to have claimed them—before!"
"You have been—generous!" answered Lissac, with a gracious smile.
He opened his secrétaire, one of the drawers of which contained little packages folded and tied with bands of silk ribbon, that slept the sleep of forgotten things.
"There are your letters, my dear Marianne! But you have nothing to fear; they have never left this spot."
The eyes of the young woman sparkled with a joyous light. Slowly as if afraid that Guy would not give them to her, she extended her bare arm toward the packet of letters and snatched it suddenly.
"My letters!"
"It is an entire romance," said Lissac.
"Less the epilogue!" she said, still enveloping him with her intense look.
She placed the packet on the velvet-covered mantelpiece and hastily finished dressing. Then taking between her fingers those little letters in their old-fashioned envelopes bearing her monogram, and that still bore traces of a woman's perfume, she looked at them for a moment and said to Lissac: