"You have read them occasionally?"
"I know them by heart!"
"My poor letters!—I was quite sincere, you know, when I wrote you them!—They must be very artless! Yours, that I have burned, were too clever. I remember that one day you wrote me from Holland: 'I pass my life among chefs-d'oeuvre, but my mind is far away from them. I have Rembrandt and Ruysdaël; but the smallest millet seed would be more to my liking: millet is fair!' Well, that was very pretty, but much too refined. True love has no wit.—All this is to convey to you that literature will not lose much by the disappearance of my disconnected scrawls."
She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection on Marianne's face. Little by little all disappeared save a patch of black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:—the dust of dead love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crêpe.
Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant joy gleamed in her eyes.
When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently:
"Requiescat! See how everything ends! It is a long time since lovers who have ceased to love invented cremation! Nothing is new under the sun!"
She was no longer the same woman. A moment before she manifested a sort of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe. He bit his lips slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong, without affectation. Marianne's ironical smile told him all that she now had to say.
It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return of letters. Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in connection with women.
"Now, my dear," said Marianne, "I hope that you will do me the kindness of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose."