"This," she said dryly, "is where I live. You see the celebrity at home."
He tried to take her to him, and she drew swiftly back.
"I have failed," she cried; "no one has read my books; I'm as poor as when you knew me first. I've spent years in holes like this! I've shammed to you because I was ashamed. My talk of people I know, of places I go to has been lies—I know no one, I go nowhere. I refused to marry you, when I was a girl, because I didn't think it good enough for me; before you stoop to ask me again, go away and think whether it's good enough for you. I've lost my hopes, my youth, my looks—you'd be giving me everything, and I should bring you nothing in return!"
His arms were quick now, and they held her fast.
"Nothing?" he demanded. His eyes challenged her. "Nothing, Irene?"
"Oh, my dearest," she wept, smiling, "if my love's enough——?"
[VI]
PICQ PLAYS THE HERO
When he had made his choice of a career, when in spite of remonstrances he had become an actor, his father had felt disgraced. His father was the hatter in the rue de la Paroisse. The shop was not prosperous—in Ville-Nogent people made their hats last a long while—but it was at least a shop, and the old man wished his son to be respectable. This, you see, was France. The little French hatter had not heard that, across the Channel, the scions of noble houses turned actors, and he would not have believed it if he had been told.