“Yes, I love him.”
“Then write to him.”
“Write to him?”
“Yes, tell him to come back ... tell him that his position makes no difference to you....”
She spoke with a certain embarrassment: and this made Gilberte feel awkward. However, she said:
“I can’t write. Guillaume alone can solve the question that lies between him and his conscience.”
Mme. de la Vaudraye gave an impatient gesture and cried:
“You can’t write! What a ridiculous scruple! Is it any worse to write to a young man than to go walking about the country with him, as I hear you did yesterday? What! My son fights a duel because of you, he leaves me because of you; and, when I, his mother, ask you ...! Well, what’s the matter? What are you looking at me like that for?”
A chair suddenly pushed aside, an overturned flower-vase bore evidence to Mme. de la Vaudraye’s burst of irritation. She flew out again:
“Oh, yes, it’s all very well, but one can’t stand that eternal gentleness of yours! Here am I, telling you how wrong you are, and you listen in such a queer way that I end by putting myself in the wrong. One always feels with you as though one were in front of an indulgent judge, who graciously forgives one’s faults. And yet it’s you who are at fault!”