indifference that
numbed her heart melt at the contact of the love; she would throw
herself on Rodolphe's breast, and tell him by kisses all that she was
unable to tell him in words. And dawn surprised them thus enlaced
together--eyes fixed on eyes, hands clasped in hands--whilst their moist
and burning lips were still murmuring that immortal word "that for five
thousand years has lingered nightly on lovers' lips."

But the next day the most futile pretext brought about a quarrel, and
love alarmed fled again for some time.

In the end, however, Rodolphe perceived that if he did not take care the
white hands of Mademoiselle Mimi would lead him to an abyss in which he
would leave his future and his youth. For a moment stern reason spoke in
him more strongly than love, and he convinced himself by strong
arguments, backed up by proofs, that his mistress did not love him. He
went so far as to say to himself, that the hours of love she granted him
were nothing but a mere sensual caprice such as married women feel for
their husbands when they long for a cashmere shawl or a new dress, or
when their lover is away, in accordance with the proverb that half a
loaf is better than no bread. In short, Rodolphe could forgive his
mistress everything except not being loved. He therefore took a supreme
resolution, and announced to Mademoiselle Mimi that she would have to
look out for another lover. Mimi began to laugh and to utter bravados.
In the end, seeing that Rodolphe was firm in his resolve, and greeted
her with extreme calmness when she returned home after a day and a night
spent out of the house, she began to grow a little uneasy in face of
this firmness, to which she was not accustomed. She was then charming
for two or three days. But her lover did not go back on what he had
said, and contented himself with asking whether she had found anyone.

"I have not even looked," she replied.

However, she had looked, and even before Rodolphe had advised her to do
so. In a fortnight she had made two essays. One of her friends had
helped her, and had at first procured her the acquaintance of a very
tender youth, who had unfolded before Mimi's eyes a horizon of Indian
cashmeres and suites of furniture in rosewood. But in the opinion of
Mimi herself this young schoolboy, who might be very good at algebra,
was not very advanced in the art of love, and as she did not like
undertaking education, she left her amorous novice on the lurch, with