--I
have ruined myself! yes, ruined myself!"

"My dear," interrupted Marianne, "see the difference between a gentleman
like Monsieur de Rosas and a little bourgeois like yourself. The duke
might have ruined himself for me but he would never have reproached me.
One never speaks of money to a woman. You are a very honest, domestic
man and you were born to worship your wife! You should stick to her! You
are not made of the stuff of a true-born lover. What you have just told
me is the remark of a loon!"

"Ah! if I had only known you!"

"Or anything! But I am better than you, you see. I was better advised
than you. The bill of exchange that you owe to the Dujarrier or to
Gochard,--whichever you like--it inconveniences you, I know!"

"Yes," said Vaudrey, "but--"

"You would not, I think, desire me to pay it with the duke's money, that
Monsieur de Rosas should pay your debts?"

"Marianne," cried Sulpice, livid with rage.

"Bless me! you speak to me of money? You chant your ruin to me! The _De
Profundis_ of your money-box, should I know that? I question with myself
as to what it means!--However, knowing you to be financially
embarrassed, I have myself found you help--Yes, I told someone who
understands how to extricate business men, that you were embarrassed!"

"I?"

"There is nothing to blush about. I told Molina the _Tumbler_--You know
him?"

Did he know him! At that very moment he saw the ruddy gold moon that
represented the banker's face amid all the expanse of his shining flesh.
He trembled as if in the face of temptation.

"Molina is a man of means," said Marianne. "If you need money, you can
have it there! And now, once more, leave me to my new life! The past is
as if it had never been!--_Bonjour, Bonsoir!_--and adieu, go!--Give me
your hand!"

She smiled so strangely, half lying on the divan, and stretched out her
white hand, which he covered with kisses, murmuring:

"Well, yes, adieu! Yes, adieu!--But once more--once!--this evening--I
love you so dearly!--Will you?"

She quietly reached out her bare arm toward a silk bell-rope that she
jerked suddenly and Vaudrey rose enraged and humiliated.

"Show Monsieur Vaudrey out," Marianne said to Justine, as she appeared
at the door. "Then you may go to bed, my girl!"

Vaudrey left this woman's house in a fit of frenzy. She had just treated
him who had paid for the divan on which she was reclining as a genuine
duchess might have treated a man who had been i