Jean might have pointed out that she wasn’t really very helpless when she had at least half a dozen men at her bidding from morning to night. But he felt a profound pity for Madame Torialli. He often thought Torialli did not understand her, and he knew that he was not worthy of her; only what man could be that? So he said:
“If I could help you the least little bit in the world it would make me very happy, Madame!”
“You do help me,” said Madame, slowly. She turned with him into the bronze room and sank on a low couch near the window. It was wide open, and summer came in through it—the soft, fresh breeze of the early summer when the earth has not yet grown sober with her riches, but sings to herself in her joy, and her songs bring all the fragrance of the fields. Even in Paris the scent of new-born flowers was in the air. The sounds from the street seemed far away; it was a still night, and the soft, green curtains hardly moved behind Madame’s golden head.
“Let us talk together for a little,” she said.
Jean sat down near her; he did not speak at once. It seemed to Jean that he did not need to speak much to her—she read his heart as if it were an open book, and he liked best to keep quite still near her, and hold it open for her to read.
“Just lately, the last few days, you have not been very happy,” said Madame gently at last. “I have felt it, you know, and I have said to myself, ‘It has not come to him as quickly as he had hoped—his great future!’ I have said to my husband, ‘That boy with us, we are perhaps using him too much?’ Torialli has laughed at me; his own success took long in coming, and he worked for it through long, dry, fruitless years. To him it seems that you are doing very well and getting on very fast. But for me—my blood runs quickly for you—I have an impatience, I want you so much to succeed.”
“When you talk like this,” said Jean, and his voice was not very steady, “you give me something sweeter than success, Madame.”
She was silent for a moment.
“But I would give you success too,” she said. It was Jean’s turn to be silent, but he was silent because he dared not speak.
“Our good Louis,” Madame continued, when she thought the pause had lasted long enough, “has an affection for you almost like that of a brother. We speak sometimes of your future, he and I. You have done wonders for him since you have been here, you have taken half his work off his shoulders; but have you—I sometimes ask myself—taken too much?”