She gave a little laugh, a sad, almost a smothered, laugh.
"Oh! Not always," she said.
They turned back toward the dunes and, seated on the sand, began to talk as though they were old friends.
She looked at him insistently, though not appearing to do so. Finally she said:
"You don't look like a nasty man."
"Is that a compliment?"
"In my mouth, yes."
Then, little by little warming up, she talked without stop. It was a flood of words, like the mounting tide, only more rapid. She told him the story of her life. Leonor liked this sort of thing from ladies of equivocal reputations, and he now displayed a keen interest, putting in little words that inspired confidence. This was what he succeeded in making out:
She lived in Paris and gave herself only to a small number of friends, always the same. The respectability of her life was, therefore, beyond suspicion. Her parents could not complain of having that sort of daughter. They lived in the north, near Boulogne; hence, in order not to meet them or the people from her part of the country, she confined her peregrinations to the seaside resorts of Normandy. Among her friends two were particularly dear. One was a young foreigner, who lived in Paris six months of the year; but he went on sending her money during the summer The other, though he was older, gave less she liked him better—being a Parisian, he was clever. He was a civil servant. She would not specify the office for which he worked, but it seemed to be the department of Fine Arts. The first of these friends imagined that she was at Grandcamp, where she had just arrived; for the civil servant was at Honfleur. That complicated her correspondence a little, but it was better. Besides, she had had no opportunity of writing to the civil servant for a long time, for he gave signs of life only by an occasional postcard. That seemed to her suspicious and made her sad. When he had last written he was at Cherbourg, but he had given no address.
"He looks like a man who wants to get married. Married! he's not capable of satisfying a woman. All the same, I like him. And besides, I should miss him for other reasons."