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“Absent yourself?”

“Yes, I’m needed on business at the section. I have come because I was afraid you might wait for me and that you would accuse me of being impolite otherwise.”

Geneviève felt her heart clutch again after a momentary respite.

“Oh, my God!” she said, a little strongly. “But Dixmer’s not here.… He was counting on finding you when he got back and so asked me to keep you here!”

“Ah! Now I understand your insistence, madame. Your husband gave you an order. I might have known! Really, I’ll never get over my conceit.”

“Maurice!”

“But it’s up to me, madame, to take note of what you do, rather than what you say. It’s up to me to figure out that if Dixmer isn’t here that’s all the more reason for me not to stay. His absence would be an added embarrassment for you.”

“How so?” Geneviève asked gingerly.

“Well, because since my return you seem to be at pains to avoid me; because I came back for you, you alone—as you know very well, for God’s sake!—yet since I came back, I’ve only ever found other people buzzing around you.”

“Come now,” said Geneviève, “you’re annoyed again, my friend, yet I’m doing my best.”

“No, you’re not, Geneviève; you can do better than that: you can see me like you used to do or chase me away for good.”

“Please, Maurice,” said Geneviève tenderly, “you must understand my situation, guess at my anguish; stop playing the tyrant with me.”

With that, the young woman strode over to him and looked at him with big, sad eyes. Maurice remained silent.

“What do you want, then?” she continued.

“I want to love you, Geneviève, for I feel now that I can’t live without loving you.”

“Maurice, for pity’s sake!”

“If that’s how you feel, madame,” cried Maurice, “you should have let me die.”

“Die?”

“Yes, die or forget.”

“So you could forget, could you?” cried Geneviève, tears stinging her eyes.

“Oh, no, no!” murmured Maurice, falling to his knees. “No, Geneviève, die maybe, but forget—never!”

“And yet,” Geneviève went on firmly, “it would be for the best, Maurice, for your love is a crime.”

“Have you told Monsieur Morand that?” said Maurice, brought back to his senses by her sudden coldness.

“Monsieur Morand is not mad like you, Maurice, and I have never needed to point out to him how he should conduct himself in a friend’s house.”

“What do you bet,” replied Maurice with a nasty smile, “what do you bet that if Dixmer’s dining elsewhere, Morand hasn’t absented himself, eh? Ha! That’s what you need to hit me with, Geneviève, if you want to stop me from loving you. For as long as Morand is there by your side, not leaving you for a second,” he spat out with contempt, “oh, then, no, no! I won’t love you, or at least I won’t admit to myself that I love you.”

“And I,” cried Geneviève, pushed to the limit by this everlasting suspicion, and squeezing the young man’s arm in a sort of frenzy, “I swear to you, listen to me, Maurice, and let it be said once and for all time, let it be said so we never return to the subject again, I swear to you that Morand has never addressed a single word of love to me, that Morand has never loved me, that Morand will never love me; I swear to you on my honor, I swear to you on my mother’s soul.”

“Alas! Alas!” cried Maurice. “I’d like nothing better than to believe you!”

“Oh! Believe me, you poor lunatic!” she said with a smile that for anyone other than a jealous man would have been a thrilling confession. “Believe me; besides, do you want to know more? Well then, Morand loves a woman before whom all women on earth pale into insignificance—just as the flowers in the field are eclipsed by the stars in the heavens.”

“What woman,” asked Maurice, “could eclipse all others when you are numbered among them?”

“The one a man loves,” Geneviève said smiling, “tell me, isn’t she always the masterpiece of all creation?”

“But,” said Maurice, “if you don’t love me, Geneviève …”

The young woman waited anxiously for the rest of the sentence.

“If you don’t love me,” Maurice resumed, “can you at least swear to me that you’ll never