"What motive had I for husbanding existence, when I had forfeited your love?"
"Ah, dear love, we have behaved very badly to each other," sighed Judith, half in remorse, half in coquetry, the tender coquetry of a mistress secure of her conquest. "If I could only be sure that we loved each other all the time!"
"I can answer for myself," protested her lover. "My passion has never altered. In all my foolish wanderings I have had but one lode-star."
"What, not when you carried off Chichinette?"
"Do not name that foreign hussy, the offspring of a Flemish Jewess and an Auvergnat who cleaned shoes on the Pont Neuf. I had her pedigree from her maid, who was an unacknowledged sister. Can you suppose I ever cared for such a creature? She was as avaricious as Harpagon, as dirty as Lady Moll Worthless, and she ate garlic and wallowed in oil at every meal!"
"And yet you ran away with her!"
"Dearest child, a man in my position was bound to run away with some woman at least once in a season. My reputation would have perished otherwise. As for Chichinette, the affair grew out of a drunken wager, and I was heartily sorry for it when I found you took the thing so seriously."
"Could I take it otherwise? Think what it was to love you as I did, to languish to be with you for ever like this," with her hand clasped in his and her head leaning against his shoulder, "and to know that you were at the feet of a French dancer. A year afterwards it turned me sick to see the creature on the stage, and I was near swooning in my box at the agony of disgust she inspired in me. But you are shivering, love. Let us go back to the house: you shall play me at billiards till dinner-time."
Then on the threshold of the temple she threw herself upon his breast and kissed those cold pale lips, which even love's frank warmth could not colour.
"I forgive you Chichinette," she said gaily, "I forgive you all your elopements, everything that is past, for you are mine now and for ever."