"Marien? You are laughing at me!" cried Fred.
"It is simply the truth."
Some magnetic influence at that moment caused the painter to turn his eyes toward the spot where they were talking.
"We were speaking of you," said Jacqueline.
And her tone was so singular that he dared not ask what they were saying. With humility which had in it a certain touch of bitterness he said, still smiling:
"You might find something better to do than to talk good or evil of a poor fellow who counts now for nothing."
"Counts for nothing! A fellow to be pitied!" cried Fred, "a man who has just been elected to the Institute—you are hard to satisfy!"
Jacqueline sat looking at him like a young sorceress engaged in sticking pins into the heart of a waxen figure of her enemy. She never missed an opportunity of showing her implacable dislike of him.
She turned to Fred: "What I was telling you," she said, "I am quite willing to repeat in his presence. The thing has lost its importance now that he has become more indifferent to me than any other man in the world."
She stopped, hoping that Marien had understood what she was saying and that he resented the humiliating avowal from her own lips that her childish love was now only a memory.