“Liane! Liane!” cried Jean, taking both her hands in his. “Why do you pretend that you do not understand me? You do! you do! you do!”
Liane withdrew her hands and returned to her powder-puff.
“You are absurd,” she said coldly. “Do not enrage me with your virtues from the provinces. I will not be taught how to live by a chicken whose shell I have just broken. I shall receive whom I like when I like. One would think, Monsieur, that I was your wife. Let me hear no more of these impertinences!”
Jean went to the window and opened it; something in his brain seemed to be burning to escape; he felt hot, savage, and reckless. No, she was not his wife; he supposed if she were he might have trusted her, he might have respected her. As it was, he did not, he hated her. All his heart seemed filled with a hard exasperation. When he turned to face her again, his eyes were fierce.
“I told him he could not come,” he said; “if you receive him you do it at your own risk.”
“You told Maurice—told him he could not come?” Liane gasped.
“I told him you must choose between us,” Jean continued doggedly. “I know he has all the things I have not got. I have nothing to offer you—yes, that is true. You see me here, Liane; how much do you suppose I have in my pocket? I think I have three francs. Well, it is all I shall have till the end of the month. Maurice is, I believe, rich; but there is one thing I have which I will not give up, and that is my pride. Now which is it to be, tell me. If it is Maurice, I go!”
Liane contrived to stare at him for a moment without speaking. She could say a good deal, but she was not going to say any of it at present. Jean with his ardent eyes full of fire and tears charmed her jaded senses. He was a new experience, she valued him. As for Maurice, that was another story. She could, she fancied, make some arrangement about Maurice. He would not cry for the moon, and she could manage for him to have something short of that commodity. As far as Jean was concerned, it was quite unnecessary that he should know anything about her arrangements. The blank look passed out of her eyes, she opened her arms to him and he knelt beside her, a child in her hands, trembling with distress at his own temerity.
“Only trust me, Jean,” she whispered. “You do trust me?”
“You won’t see him, Liane?”