'I am not
sufficiently on a level with you to be able to judge you--I thank
God.'
I shivered though the sun was on me, and the hollow where we
stood was warm.
'Still, once before you thought the same,' I exclaimed after a
pause, 'and afterwards you found that you had been wrong. It may
be so again, Mademoiselle.'
'Impossible,' she said.
That stung me.
'No,' I cried. 'It is not impossible. It is you who are
impossible. It is you who are heartless, Mademoiselle. I have
done much in the last three days to make things lighter for you,
much to make things more easy; now I ask you to do something in
return which can cost you nothing.'
'Nothing?' she answered slowly--and she looked at me; and her
eyes and her voice cut me as if they had been knives. 'Nothing?
Do you think, Monsieur, it costs me nothing to lose my self-
respect, as I do with every word I speak to you? Do you think it
costs me nothing to be here when I feel every look you cast upon
me an insult, every breath I take in your presence a
contamination? Nothing, Monsieur?' she continued with bitter
irony.
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