"And how do you know that I haven't read the letter?" she asked, in her astonishment.
"My little finger whispered it to me!"
At this she burst out laughing, and pushed the letter away.
"I don't mean to read it! I know that you have written no end of good things about me."
I folded up my letter, sealed it and wrote the address—"Joseph Molnár and Alexander Vérchovszky, Advocates." Then I handed it to her.
Still she kept standing there in front of my writing-table, twirling the letter round and round in her hands, and gazing continually at the portrait. Her face had become quite solemn. In her deeply downcast eyes there was a suspicious brightness testifying to restrained tear-drops.
She heaved a deep sigh.
"But this is mere folly!" She thrust my letter beneath her bodice, and in a voice of real warmth and sincerity, she stammered: "I thank you most kindly." Then she added, in a voice half grave, half gay: "But come now! You won't write my story in the newspapers, will you?"
"I assure you it is not my practice."
"And you won't put my stupid story into a novel or a romance, eh? At least not while I'm alive?"