"Because your mirth hurts me."

"Well, I will be sad."

"Marguerite, let me say to you something which you have no doubt
often heard, so often that the habit of hearing it has made you
believe it no longer, but which is none the less real, and which
I will never repeat."

"And that is . . . ?" she said, with the smile of a young mother
listening to some foolish notion of her child.

"It is this, that ever since I have seen you, I know not why, you
have taken a place in my life; that, if I drive the thought of
you out of my mind, it always comes back; that when I met you
to-day, after not having seen you for two years, you made a
deeper impression on my heart and mind than ever; that, now that
you have let me come to see you, now that I know you, now that I
know all that is strange in you, you have become a necessity of
my life, and you will drive me mad, not only if you will not love
me, but if you will not let me love you."

"But, foolish creature that you are, I shall say to you, like
Mme. D., 'You must be very rich, then!' Why, you don't know that
I spend six or seven thousand francs a month, and that I could
not live without it; you don't know, my poor friend, that I
should ruin you in no time, and that your family would cast you
off if you were to live with a woman like me. Let us be friends,
good friends, but no more. Come and see me, we will laugh and
talk, but don't exaggerate what I am worth, for I am worth very