"When you're back in Africa you won't quite forget your little Marie who taught you to be a man, will you?" she whispered tearfully.
Her remarks made him laugh.
"I've had women of my own for at least a year before I met you," he replied.
It seemed to Marie she had never really known the youth who had come to her a savage and was leaving her looking a finished man of the world. He never talked to her of himself or his affairs. Although kind and generous, he demanded swift obedience, and he treated her always as something infinitely inferior to himself.
"Say you love me," she pleaded. "That you'll think of me sometimes."
"Love!" he said contemptuously. "I don't love women. I have them for my pleasure. I'm not one of your white men who spend their days whining at some one woman's feet pleading for favours. Women to me are only toys. Good to look upon, if beautiful, but not so good as horses."
"Oh, you are cruel!" she said, weeping. "And I thought you loved me."
"It is the woman's place to love. There are other things in a man's life."
Marie realised she had never had any hold on her protégé. She had been of use to him, and he had paid her well for it, and there, as far as he was concerned, the matter ended.
Being sensible, she sat up and dried her tears, gathering consolation from the fact that he had been a good speculation. There would be no immediate need to return to the florist's shop when he had gone. In fact, if she liked to sell the necklace, she could buy a business of her own.