"But seriously?"
"No."
"I was sure of it."
"And why?" Barabant demanded, nettled at her assumption.
"Because you understand nothing of a woman." She continued rapidly: "Listen to reason, my friend. You assume rights over me and my actions, and yet what right have you? You have never once told me that you love me. Yet you are angry because I insist upon being wooed, foolish, ignorant fellow!"
Her reproof, which she designed to be heavy, weakened despite herself, until at the end she pronounced it almost caressingly.
"Is that just, Nicole?" Barabant cried, seizing the opening. "Why am I angry? Because you will not give me the opportunity." He drew her closer to him. "Nicole, listen to me but once."
"No, no," she checked him imperiously, "I do not wish to. You are too headlong. Barabant, I tell you, you do not know yourself."
"I—I don't know what I feel?"
She checked him again.