"Perhaps.

"How you receive me! What have I done, my dear Marguerite?"

"My dear friend, you have done nothing. I am ill; I must go to
bed, so you will be good enough to go. It is sickening not to be
able to return at night without your making your appearance five
minutes afterward. What is it you want? For me to be your
mistress? Well, I have already told you a hundred times, No; you
simply worry me, and you might as well go somewhere else. I
repeat to you to-day, for the last time, I don't want to have
anything to do with you; that's settled. Good-bye. Here's Nanine
coming in; she can light you to the door. Good-night."

Without adding another word, or listening to what the young man
stammered out, Marguerite returned to the room and slammed the
door. Nanine entered a moment after.

"Now understand," said Marguerite, "you are always to say to that
idiot that I am not in, or that I will not see him. I am tired
out with seeing people who always want the same thing; who pay me
for it, and then think they are quit of me. If those who are
going to go in for our hateful business only knew what it really
was they would sooner be chambermaids. But no, vanity, the desire
of having dresses and carriages and diamonds carries us away; one
believes what one hears, for here, as elsewhere, there is such a
thing as belief, and one uses up one's heart, one's body, one's
beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey,
scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more