"And never," she kept it up, "refer in any way to anything about this affair to me?"
"Never again, dear lady."
"You should even stop thinking of me," she almost faltered, "in—in that way."
He pressed her hand ever so slightly.
"Ah," he said, "now you ask what my will cannot accomplish."
"But the thoughts are wrong."
"Yes, I understand that now. You have made me understand it. But I cannot sever from myself what has become a part of my mind; I can only master my tongue. Yet you need not fear me, nor need I fear myself. The good St. Augustine has said that we cannot control our desires, but he has not neglected to remind us that we can and must control our actions. I shall remember always his words."
She said nothing for awhile, but gradually he released her hand, and their talk, though still freighted with feeling, fell, or seemed to them to fall, upon trivial things.
"You did not stop in Marseilles?" he asked her, turning again to the subject of her fevered trip with Jim.
"We didn't get anywhere near it. I—we were in a hurry to get back to Paris. We—we thought it would be warmer in Paris."