"I can't imagine you married."
"Really? I dare say you will see me so two or three times."
"I don't like you to laugh at these things."
"What would one laugh at, my dear Salvation Army lassie? Come, Mrs. General Booth"—she pronounced it "Botte"—"don't knit your beautiful brows. I'm not thinking of changing before I've even tried it. I am marrying in the hope that it's for good. But if it doesn't last, one must be able to resign oneself."
"I am not anxious about you," said Annette.
"Really? I thank you for his sake. Has he made a conquest of you?"
"He isn't good enough for you, Sylvie. But I shouldn't want you to make this good man suffer some day."
Sylvie smiled and looked at her teeth in the mirror.
"Suffer! Everybody makes the other person suffer. That's nothing. Of course he will suffer, poor man! I shouldn't mind being in his place. Come, don't disturb yourself about him. Do you think I don't know the value of my Adonis? It isn't dazzling, but it amounts to a good deal. I know what I'm about. I shan't tell him, for it doesn't do to spoil men. It allows them to think they have rights over us. But privately I shall not forget it. I shan't do myself the wrong of doing him a wrong. And if I don't promise never to make him angry—which might be an excellent way of making him a little thinner—I shan't put him on the grill unless it is necessary. Of course, assuming that I have no reason to complain of him. Otherwise it would serve him right to give him his due. And I pay in cash. I am an honest business woman; I don't deceive my customers any more than is necessary for me to live. Unless they try to get the best of me. Then I get the best of them. Don't I!"
"To think," Annette exclaimed, "that you never can get her to talk seriously!"