"Come, come, my little Elodie. I am not going to leave you. It was only an idea. If it had attracted you, well and good. But as it doesn't, let us say no more about it."
"I don't want to hinder you in your life, André," she said brokenly. "ça me donne beaucoup de peine. But you see, don't you, that I couldn't do it?"
He soothed her as best he could. Les Petit Patou would invent new business, of a comicality that would once more make their fortunes. That being so, why should they not be married?
She looked at him searchingly. "You desire it as much as that?"
"I desire earnestly," said he, "to do what is right."
"Are you sure that it doesn't come from the respectability of an English General?"
"I don't know how it comes," he replied, hiding the sting of the shrewd thrust with a laugh, "but it's there, all the same."
"Well, I'll think of it," said Elodie, "but give me time. Ne m'embête pas."
He promised not to worry her. "But tell me," he said, after a few moments' perplexity, "why were you so agitated all yesterday after you had seen that photograph?"
Elodie let her hand fall on her lap and regarded him with pitying astonishment. "Mon Dieu! What do you expect a woman to be when she learns that her husband, whom she thinks alive, has been killed two years ago?"