ssion which was all the more disquieting
and intoxicating.

"Let us speak no more about that, shall we?" she said. "I repeat to you
that I am satisfied at having seen Monsieur de Rosas again, because it
affords my self-love its revenge. Now, whether he comes back or not, it
matters little to me. He has made the _amende honorable_. That is the
principal thing, and you, my dear, must not be jealous; I find Othello's
role tiresome; oh! yes, tiresome!--The more so, because you have no
right to treat me as a Desdemona. The Code does not permit it."

"You want to remind me again, then, that I am married? A moment ago, you
stabbed me by pin-thrusts."

"In speaking of your household? Say then with knife-thrusts."

"Why did you mention my wife before Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Why," said Marianne, "you do not understand anything. It was for your
sake, for you alone, in order to explain the presence in Marianne's
house, of a minister who is considered to lead a puritan life. Nothing
could be more simple!--Would you have me tell him that you neglect your
wife and that you are my lover? Perhaps you would have liked that
better!"

"Yes, perhaps," said Vaudrey passionately.

"Vain fellow!" the pretty girl said as she placed upon his mouth her
little hand which he kept upon his lips. "Then you would like me to
parade our secrets everywhere and to publicly announce our happiness?"

"I should like," he said, as he removed his lips from the soft palm of
her hand, "that all the world should know that you are mine, mine
only--only mine, are you not?--That man?"

His eyes entreated her and lost their fire.

Marianne shrugged her shoulders.

"Let Monsieur de Rosas alone in tranquillity and let us return to my
house, _our house_," she said, with a tender expression in her eyes.

"You do not love him?"

"No."

"And you love me?"

"I have told you so."

"You love me? You love me?"

"I love you!--Ah!" she said, "how unhappy you would be, nevertheless, if
I told you aloud some day in one of the lobbies of the Assembly what you
ask me to repeat here in a whisper."

"I should prefer that to losing you and to knowing that you did not love
me."

"He is telling the truth, however, the great fool!" cried Marianne,
laughing.

"The real, sincere, profound truth!"

He drew her to him, seated on the vulgar divan where Simon Kayser was
wont to display his paradoxes, and encircling her waist with both arms
he felt her yielding form be