Nathan walked on a few steps in a state of real apprehension which
oppressed him.

"It must be," he said, after a moment's silence, "one of those
frivolous fears, those hazy suspicions which women dwell on more than
they do on the great things of life. You all have a way of tipping the
world sideways with a straw, a cobweb--"

"Sarcasm!" she said, "I might have expected it!"

"Marie, my angel, I only said those words to wring your secret out of
you."

"My secret would be always a secret, even if I told it to you."

"But all the same, tell it to me."

"I am not loved," she said, giving him one of those sly oblique
glances with which women question so maliciously the men they are
trying to torment.

"Not loved!" cried Nathan.

"No; you are too occupied with other things. What am I to you in the
midst of them? forgotten on the least occasion! Yesterday I came to
the Bois and you were not here--"

"But--"