little. You have a good heart, you want some one to love you, you
are too young and too sensitive to live in a world like mine.
Take a married woman. You see, I speak to you frankly, like a
friend."

"But what the devil are you doing there?" cried Prudence, who had
come in without our bearing her, and who now stood just inside
the door, with her hair half coming down and her dress undone. I
recognised the hand of Gaston.

"We are talking sense," said Marguerite; "leave us alone; we will
be back soon."

"Good, good! Talk, my children," said Prudence, going out and
closing the door behind her, as if to further empbasize the tone
in which she had said these words.

"Well, it is agreed," continued Marguerite, when we were alone,
"you won't fall in love with me?"

"I will go away."

"So much as that?"

I had gone too far to draw back; and I was really carried away.
This mingling of gaiety, sadness, candour, prostitution, her very
malady, which no doubt developed in her a sensitiveness to
impressions, as well as an irritability of nerves, all this made
it clear to me that if from the very beginning I did not
completely dominate her light and forgetful nature, she was lost