than from his natural lack of dignity. He believed in her
through force of education and simplicity of intelligence.

"Therese, I love you, and you love me, I know. Why do you torment me?
Sometimes you are painfully harsh."

She shook her little head brusquely.

"What will you have? I am harsh and obstinate. It is in the blood. I take
it from my father. You know Joinville; you have seen the castle, the
ceilings, the tapestries, the gardens, the park, the hunting-grounds, you
have said that none better were in France; but you have not seen my
father's workshop--a white wooden table and a mahogany bureau. Everything
about me has its origin there. On that table my father made figures for
forty years; at first in a little room, then in the apartment where I was
born. We were not very wealthy then. I am a parvenu's daughter, or a
conqueror's daughter, it's all the same. We are people of material
interests. My father wanted to earn money, to possess what he could
buy--that is, everything. I wish to earn and keep--what? I do not
know--the happiness that I have--or that I have not. I have my own way of
being exacting. I long for dreams and illusions. Oh, I know very well
that all this is not worth the trouble that a woman takes in giving
herself to a man; but it is a trouble that is worth something, because my
trouble is myself, my life. I like to enjoy what I like, or think what I
like. I do not wish to lose. I am like papa: I demand what is due to me.
And then--"

She lowered her voice:

"And then, I have--impulses! Now, my dear, I bore you. What will you
have? You shouldn't have loved me."

This language, to which she had accustomed him, often spoiled his
pleasure. But it did not alarm him. He was sensitive to all that she did,
but not at all to what she said; and he attached no importance to a
woman's words. Talking little himself, he could not imagine that often
words are the same as actions.

Although he loved her, or, rather, because he loved her with strength and
confidence, he thought it his duty to resist her whims, which he judged
absurd. Whenever he played the master, he succeeded with her; and,
naively, he always ended by playing it.

"You know very well, Therese, that I wish to do nothing except to be
agreeable to you. Don't be capricious with me."

"And why should I not be capricious? If I gave myself to you, it was not
because I was logical, nor because I thought I must. It was because I was
capricio