"How do you know that?"
"You mean that our ancestors live in us. Well, I can't bother. If Maurice were a crossing-sweeper, and his grandmother had been an evilly disposed charwoman, who could never get any one to trust her to char, I'd marry him to-morrow if he'd have me."
"I'm quite sure you would."
"Besides, probably the grandmother was a delicious old dear. But didn't you like Maurice, Emile? I felt so sure you did."
"I—yes, I liked him. I see his fascination. It is almost absurdly obvious, and yet it is quite natural. He is handsome and he is charming."
"And he's good, too."
"Why not? He does not look evil. I thought of him as a Mercury."
"The messenger of the gods—yes, he is like that."
She laid her hand on his arm, as if her happiness and longing for sympathy in it impelled her to draw very near to a human being.
"A bearer of good tidings—that is what he has been to me. I want you to like and understand him so much, Emile; you more, far more, than any one else."