"Sit down," he said, "we have to talk seriously."

She sat down without taking her bonnet off, only turning back her veil,
and waited.

He had lowered his eyes, and was preparing the beginning of his speech.
He commenced in a low tone of voice: "My dear one, you see me very
uneasy, very sad, and very much embarrassed at what I have to admit to
you. I love you dearly. I really love you from the bottom of my heart,
so that the fear of causing you pain afflicts me more than even the news
I am going to tell you."

She grew pale, felt herself tremble, and stammered out: "What is the
matter? Tell me at once."

He said in sad but resolute tones, with that feigned dejection which we
make use of to announce fortunate misfortunes: "I am going to be
married."

She gave the sigh of a woman who is about to faint, a painful sigh from
the very depths of her bosom, and then began to choke and gasp without
being able to speak.

Seeing that she did not say anything, he continued: "You cannot imagine
how much I suffered before coming to this resolution. But I have neither
position nor money. I am alone, lost in Paris. I needed beside me
someone who above all would be an adviser, a consoler, and a stay. It is
a partner, an ally, that I have sought, and that I have found."

He was silent, hoping that she would reply, expecting furious rage,
violence, and insults. She had placed one hand on her heart as though to
restrain its throbbings, and continued to draw her breath by painful
efforts, which made her bosom heave spasmodically and her head nod to
and fro. He took her other hand, which was resting on the arm of the
chair, but she snatched it away abruptly. Then she murmured, as though
in a state of stupefaction: "Oh, my God!"

He knelt down before her, without daring to touch her, however, and more
deeply moved by this silence than he would have been by a fit of anger,
stammered out: "Clo! my darling Clo! just consider my situation,
consider what I am. Oh! if I had been able to marry you, what happiness
it would have been. But you are married. What could I do? Come, think of
it, now. I must take a place in society, and I cannot do it so long as I
have not a home. If you only knew. There are days when I have felt a
longing to kill your husband."

He spoke in his soft, subdued, seductive voice, a voice which entered
the ear like music. He saw two tears slowly gather in the fixed and
staring eyes of his mistress and then roll