"We shall never, I suppose, talk like this again. You go back to Paris?"
She seemed to reflect, as though she were anxious to give me an answer accurately true.
"Not very hard now," she said at last, looking full at me. "Not very hard, but very constant, always with me. I love them all, all my folk. But it's always there."
"You mean--What do you mean? The thought of me?"
"Yes, or the thought that somehow I have just missed. I'm not miserable. And I like to dream--to be gorgeous, splendid, wicked in dreams." She gave a laugh and pressed my hand for a moment. "Toté grows pretty," she said. "Don't you think so?"
"Toté was unhappy with me, and I let her go. Yes, she's pretty; she won't be like you, though."
"I'll appeal to you again in five, in ten years," said she, smiling, pleased with my covert praise. "Oh, it's pleasant to see you again," she went on a moment later. "I'm a bad penitent. I wish I could be with you always. No, I am not dreaming now. I mean, just in Forstadt and seeing you."
"A moment ago you were glad to go back to Paris."
"Ah, you assume more ignorance of us than you have. Mayn't I be glad of one thing and wish another?"
I felt the old charm of the quick word coming from the beautiful lips, the twofold appeal. Though passion was gone, pleasure in her remained; my love was dead. As I sat there I wished it alive again; I longed to be back in the storm of it, even though I must battle the storm again.
"After all," she said, with a glance at me, "I have my share in you. You can't think of your life without thinking of me. I'm something to you. I'm one among the many foolish things--You don't hate the foolish things?"
"On my soul, I believe not one of them; and if you're one, I love one of them."
A long silence fell on us. The thing had not come in either of the fashions in which I had pictured it, neither in weariness nor in excitement. It came full with emotions, but emotions that were subdued shadows of themselves, of a mournful sweetness, bewailing their lost strength, yet shrinking from remembrance of it. Would we have gone back if we could? Now I could not answer the question. Yet we could weep, because to go back was impossible. But it was with a slight laugh that at last I rose to my feet to say good-bye.