HENRIETTE. You don't look very hilarious.

MAURICE. No, I feel rather sad, and I should like to weep a
little.

HENRIETTE. What is the meaning of that?

MAURICE. It is fortune conscious of its own nothingness and
waiting for misfortune to appear.

HENRIETTE. Oh my, how sad! What is it you are missing anyhow?

MAURICE. I miss the only thing that gives value to life.

HENRIETTE. So you love her no longer then?

MAURICE. Not in the way I understand love. Do you think she has
read my play, or that she wants to see it? Oh, she is so good, so
self-sacrificing and considerate, but to go out with me for a
night's fun she would regard as sinful. Once I treated her to
champagne, you know, and instead of feeling happy over it, she
picked up the wine list to see what it cost. And when she read the
price, she wept--wept because Marion was in need of new stockings.
It is beautiful, of course: it is touching, if you please. But I
can get no pleasure out of it. And I do want a little pleasure
before life runs out. So far I have had nothing but privation, but
now, now--life is beginning for me. [The clock strikes twelve] Now
begins a new day, a new era!

HENRIETTE. Adolphe is not coming.

MAURICE. No, now he won't, come. And now it is too late to go back
to the Cremerie.

HENRIETTE. But they are waiting for you.

MAURICE. Let them wait. They have made me promise to come, and I
take back my promise. Are you longing to go there?

HENRIETTE. On the contrary!

MAURICE. Will you keep me company then?

HENRIETTE. With pleasure, if you care to have me.

MAURICE. Otherwise I shouldn't be asking you. It is strange, you
know, that the victor's wreath seems worthless if you can't place
it at the feet of some woman--that everything seems worthless when
you have not a woman.

HENRIETTE. You don't need to be without a woman--you?

MAURICE. Well, that's the question.

HENRIETTE. Don't you know that a man is irresistible in his hour
of success and fame?

MAURICE. No, I don't know, for I have had no experience of it.

HENRIETTE. You are a queer sort! At this moment, when you are the
most envied man in Paris, you sit here and brood. Perhaps your
conscience is troubling you because you have neglected that
invitation to drink chicory coffee with the old lady over at the
milk shop?

MAURICE. Yes, my conscience is troubling me on that score, and
even here I am aware of their resentment, their hurt feelings,
their well-grounded a