lphe thought this was an outburst of her
love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of
resistance, and then he cried out--

"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and
cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!" He was
kneeling by her.

"Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs."

"But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave
expression.

"You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his whole
fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don't
pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall
have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs,
we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and,
counting upon your friendship, I have come to you."

"Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she came for."
At last he said with a calm air--

"Dear madame, I have not got them."

He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them,
although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand
for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and
most destructive.

First she looked at him for some moments.

"You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have not got
them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me.
You are no better than the others."

She was betraying, ruining herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself.

"Ah! I pity you," said Emma. "Yes--very much."

And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its
panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on the butt of
one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell," she went
on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor silver-gilt whistles for one's
whips," and she touched them, "nor charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants
for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself;
you live well. You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you
travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two
studs from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can get
money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!"

And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as
it struck against the wall.

"But I! I would have giv