He spoke quietly, almost coldly. Hermione looked at him with shining eyes. She had quite forgotten Madame Lagrande and Robert Meunier, had lost the sense of the special in her love of the general.
"That's a grand theory," she said. "That we must come back to the good that is in us in the end, that we must be true to that somehow, almost whether we will or no. I shall try to think of that when I am sinning."
"You—sinning!" exclaimed Delarey.
"Maurice, dear, you think too well of me."
Delarey flushed like a boy, and glanced quickly at Artois, who did not return his gaze.
"But if that's true, Emile," Hermione continued, "Madame Lagrande and Robert Meunier will be friends again."
"Some day I know she will hold out the olive-branch, but what if he refuses it?"
"You literary people are dreadfully difficile."
"True. Our jealousies are ferocious, but so are the jealousies of thousands who can neither read nor write."
"Jealousy," she said, forgetting to eat in her keen interest in the subject. "I told you I didn't believe myself capable of it, but I don't know. The jealousy that is born of passion I might understand and suffer, perhaps, but jealousy of a talent greater than my own, or of one that I didn't possess—that seems to me inexplicable. I could never be jealous of a talent."