“I have Peppina here.”

“Of course.”

“You knew—?”

“I have known you as an impulsive for—how many years? Why should you change?”

He looked at her in silence for a moment. Then he continued:

“Sometimes you remind me—in spots, as it were—of George Sand.”

She laughed, not quite without bitterness.

“In spots, indeed!”

“She described herself once in a book as having ‘a great facility’ for illusions, a blind benevolence of judgment, a tenderness of heart that was inexhaustible—”

“Oh!”