r.

"Why?" she retorts, defiantly.

"As if I did not see...."

She laughs aloud:

"See what you please!" she exclaims, indifferently, with her voice of
rough _sans-gene_, which is in fashion. "No, my dear Dutri, you needn't
warn me, I assure you! Why, my dear boy, I have two girls to bring out
next year! In two years' time I may be a grandmamma. I have given up
that sort of thing. I can't understand that there are women so mad as
always to want that. And then it makes you grow old so quickly...."

Dutri roars; he can't restrain himself, he chokes with laughing....

"What are you laughing at?" she asks.

He looks at her, shakes his head, as though to say he knows all about
it:

"Really, there's no need for you to play hide-and-seek like that with
me, Alexa. I know as well as you do ... that you yourself are one of
those mad women!..."

He bursts out laughing again; and this time she joins in:

"I?"

"Get out! You want that as much as you want food and sleep at regular
intervals. You would have been dead long ago, if you had not had your
periodical 'emotions'. And, as to growing old, you know you hate the
very thought of it!"

"Oh no! I do what I can to remain young, because that's a duty which one
owes to one's self. But I don't fight against it. And you shall see,
when the time comes, that I shall carry my old age very gracefully...."

"As you carry everything."

"Thanks. Look here: when I begin to go grey, I shall put something on my
hair that will make me grey entirely and I will powder it, do you see?
That's all!"

"A good idea...."

"Dutri...."

He looked at her, understood that she wanted to ask him something. They
walked on for an instant silently, in the dark; constantly walking to
and fro, they each time passed twice through the light that fell in two
wide patches through the doors on to the terrace. The park was full of
black shadow and the great vases on the terrace shone vaguely white;
above, the sky hung full of stars.

"What did you want to ask me?" asked the equerry.

She waited till they had passed through the light and were again walking
in the darkness:

"Do you ever hear of him now?"

"Thesbia had a letter from him the other day, from Paris. Not much news.
He's boring himself, I believe, and running through his money. It's the
stupidest thing you can do, to run through your money in Paris. I think
Paris a played-out hole. Of course it couldn't be anything else. A
republic