"Don't make fun of me! . . . I don't amount to much, I don't pretend that I do. But after all I know what I am, and that I have a life . . . a poor little life. . . . It's not so long, a lifetime, and one has it only once. . . . I have the right. . . . No, not the right if you will! that seems egotistical. . . . It is my duty not to lose it, not to throw it away at random. . . ."
Instead of being touched, he assumed a hurt air.
"You think that you are throwing it away at random? Is your life going to be lost? Won't it have a fine, a very beautiful purpose?"
"Beautiful, no doubt. . . . But what? What do you offer me?"
Once again he ardently described his political career, the future of which he dreamed, his great personal and social ambitions. She listened to him talk, then, gently stopping him in the middle (for of such a subject he was never weary), she said:
"Yes, Roger. Certainly. That is very, very interesting. But to tell you the truth—no, don't be ruffled—I haven't quite as much faith as you in this political cause to which you are consecrating yourself."
"What! you don't believe in it? But you did believe in it when I spoke to you about it those first times that I saw you in Paris. . . ."
"I have changed a little," said she.
"What has changed you? . . . No, no, it's not possible. . . . You will change back again. My generous Annette couldn't be disinterested in the cause of the people, in the reform of society!"
"But I am not disinterested in it," she replied. "What I am disinterested in is the political cause."