She sipped her wine, then set down the glass and leaned her elbow on the table, taking her chin in her fine white hand. “Madame tells me that he is dead,” said she, and Garnache was shocked at the comparative calmness with which she said it. He looked at her sharply from under his sooted brows. Was she, after all, he wondered, no different from other women? Was she cold and calculating, and had she as little heart as he had come to believe was usual with her sex, that she could contemplate so calmly the possibility of her lover being dead? He had thought her better, more natural, more large-hearted and more pure. That had encouraged him to stand by her in these straits of hers, no matter at what loss of dignity to himself. It began to seem that his conclusions had been wrong.
His silence caused her to look up, and in his face she read something of what was passing in his thoughts. She smiled rather wanly.
“You are thinking me heartless, Monsieur de Garnache?”
“I am thinking you—womanly.”
“The same thing, then, to your mind. Tell me, monsieur, do you know much of women?”
“God forbid! I have found trouble enough in my life.”
“And you pass judgment thus upon a sex with which you have no acquaintance?”
“Not by acquaintance only is it that we come to knowledge. There are ways of learning other than by the road of experience. One may learn of dangers by watching others perish. It is the fool who will be satisfied alone with the knowledge that comes to him from what he undergoes himself.”
“You are very wise, monsieur,” said she demurely, so demurely that he suspected her of laughing at him. “You were never wed?”
“Never, mademoiselle,” he answered stiffly, “nor ever in any danger of it.”