She drew her hand sharply away from his.
“Are you angry with me?”
“Angry? No! What does it matter to me?”
“I am a man. I live alone. My life is lonely. Must I give up everything before I know that some day I shall have the only thing I really wish? You know men. You know how we are. I do not defend. I only say that I am not better than the other men. I want to be happy. If that is not for me, then I want to make the time pass. I do not pretend. Men generally pretend very much to beautiful girls. But you would not believe such nonsense.”
“Then why didn’t you stay in the restaurant?”
“Because I thought to do that would be like an insult for you. Such girls as that—mud—they must not come into your life even by chance, even for a few minutes. No man wishes to show himself with mud to a lady he respects. I tell you just the truth.”
“Have you—have you seen her again?”
“She is in Paris. She has been in Paris for many days. But she is nothing. Why speak of such people?”
“I don’t know. But I hate—”
She moved restlessly. Then she got up and went to the fire. He followed her. She could not understand her own jealousy. It humiliated her as she had never been humiliated before. She felt jealous of this man’s absolute freedom, of his past. A sort of rage possessed her when she thought of all the experiences he must certainly have had. She almost hated him for those experiences. She wished she could lay hands on them, tear them out of him, so that he should not have them any longer in memory’s treasury. And yet she knew that, without them, he would probably attract her much less.