ther's English?" "Because he's a commoner, because he isn't noble."
"But then--then what did you go and marry him for?" I stammered.
"Where would you have been if I hadn't?" my mother enquired. That
puzzled me for a moment, but then I answered, "Well, if you'd married
a Frenchman, a Count or a Duke or something, I shouldn't have been a
bourgeois;" and my mother confessed that that was true enough. "I
don't care if I _am_ a bourgeois," I said at last. "When I'm big I'm
going back to Saint-Graal; and if her father won't let me really marry
her, because I'm a bourgeois, then we'll just go on making believe
we're married."'

She laughed. 'And now you are big, and you've come back to
Saint-Graal, and your lady-love is at Granjolaye. Why don't you call
on her and offer to redeem your promise?'

'Why doesn't she send for me--bid me to an audience?'

'Perhaps her prophetic soul warns her how you'd disappoint her.'

'Do you think she'd be disappointed in me?'

'Aren't you disappointed in yourself?'

'Oh, dear, no; I think I'm very nice.'

'_I_ should be disappointed in myself, if I were a man who had been
capable of such an innocent, sweet affection as yours for Helene de la
Granjolaye, and had then gone and soiled myself with the mud of what
they call life.' She spoke earnestly; her face was grave and sad.

He was surprised, and a little alarmed. 'Do you mean by that that you
think I'm a bad lot?' he asked.

'You said the other day--yesterday was it?--that you had made a fool
of yourself on various occasions.'

'Well?'

'Did the process not generally involve making a fool of a woman too?'

'Reciprocity? Perhaps.'

'And what was it you always said to them?'

'Oh, I suppose I did.'

'You told them you loved them?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'And was it true?'

'No.'

'Well, then!'

'Ah, but they weren't deceived; they never believed it. That's only a
convention of the game, a necessary formula, like the "Dear" at the
beginning of a letter.'

'You have "lived"; you have "lived." You'd have been so unique, so
rare, so much more interesting, if instead of going and "living" like
other men, you had remained true to the ideal passion of your
childhood.'

'I had the misfortune to be born into the world, and not into a fairy
tale, you see. But it's a perfectly gratuitous assumption, that I have
"lived."'

'Can you honestly tell me you haven't?' she asked, very soberly, with
something like eagerness; her pale fac