Dutri is very familiar with the duchess: he calls her by her Christian name, he always flirts with her a little, to amuse himself, from swagger, without receiving any further favours; they know each other too well, they have been in each other's confidence too long and she looks upon him more as a cavaliere servente for trifling services and little court intrigues than as one for whom she could ever feel any sort of "emotion."
"Ma chère Alexa, take care!" says he, wagging his finger at her.
"Why?" she retorts, defiantly.
"As if I did not see...."
She laughs aloud:
"See what you please!" she exclaims, indifferently, with her voice of rough sans-gêne, which is in fashion. "No, my dear Dutri, you needn't warn me, I assure you! Why, my dear boy, I have two girls to bring out next year! In two years' time I may be a grandmamma. I have given up that sort of thing. I can't understand that there are women so mad as always to want that. And then it makes you grow old so quickly...."
Dutri roars; he can't restrain himself, he chokes with laughing....
"What are you laughing at?" she asks.
He looks at her, shakes his head, as though to say he knows all about it:
"Really, there's no need for you to play hide-and-seek like that with me, Alexa. I know as well as you do ... that you yourself are one of those mad women!..."