"And what about my father? He has agreed to our marriage."
"Your father lives a long way from Paris. He is kind and trustful. No doubt his friend promised him to make you happy, and he believed him."
"I believed him too. Alas! he had begun to make me happy already."
"Oh! his intentions weren't bad. M. Hervart is not a bad man. He is fickle, inconstant, irresolute."
"He's an egoist. All men are egoists, for that matter, but there are degrees. Is he capable of loving a woman whole-heartedly, capable of consecrating his life to weaving daily joys for her? And yet what could be a more perfect dream, when one meets in his path a creature who is worthy of it, one who draws to herself not only love but adoration!"
"I suppose that women like that are rare."
"Those who have known one and desert her are very guilty."
"Say rather that they are very much to be pitied. But not being one of these women, I didn't ask so much."
"You don't know yourself, Mademoiselle. Oh! if only I had been in M. Hervart's place."
"What would have happened?" asked Rose, without the least emotion, without even the least curiosity.
"He didn't love you as you should be loved."
"I don't know. How should I know these things? I believed, that was all. I believed in him."
"Perhaps it was I who was unworthy of him, since he loves me no more."
"Unworthy of him, you? Don't you know, then, what this woman is?"
"No, and I don't want to know. Oh! I'm not jealous. I'm humiliated. I feel as though I had been beaten. Jealous? No. I have stopped loving and I shall never love again."
"Happiness always has to be looked for. When one looks for it one finds it."
"Happiness falls from heaven one day; then it goes up again and never descends any more."
"You will be happy as soon as you meet some one you really love with all the force of an ardent and devoted heart."
"Don't let's speak of these things. It hurts me."
"I obey you. I will be silent, but not before telling you that that heart is mine."
Rose looked at him with astonished eyes. She seemed not to understand. Leonor, very much moved, got up, walked towards her and said, in a whisper:
At these words, Rose started, and when Leonor tried to take her hand, she got up and ran away, crying: