cried:

"Je ne veux me souvenir.... me souvenir de rien!"

"If I remember, I shall be more unhappy. All has been a dream. His look
was a dream, his pressure of my hand, his kiss on the last day, all--all
--were dreams. He was making a fool of me when he gave me that pink
which is now in this pile of ashes. He was laughing when he told me I
was more beautiful than was natural. Never have I been--never shall I be
in his eyes--more than the baby he remembers playing with her doll."

And unconsciously, as Jacqueline said these words, she imitated the
careless accent with which she had heard them fall from the lips of the
artist. And she would have again to meet him! If she had had thunder
and lightning at her command, as she had had the match with which she had
set fire to the memorials of her juvenile folly, Marien would have been
annihilated on the spot. She was at that moment a murderess at heart.
But the dinner-bell rang. The young fury gave a last glance at the
adornments of her pretty bedchamber, so elegant, so original--all blue
and pink, with a couch covered with silk embroidered with flowers.
She seemed to say to them all: "Keep my secret. It is a sad one. Be
careful: keep it safely." The cupids on the clock, the little book-rest
on a velvet stand, the picture of the Virgin that hung over her bed, with
rosaries and palms entwined about it, the photographs of her girl-friends
standing on her writing table in pretty frames of old-fashioned silk-all
seemed to see her depart with a look of sympathy.

She went down to the dining-room, resolved to prove that she would not
submit to punishment. The best way to brave Madame de Nailles was, she
thought, to affect great calmness and indifference, aye, even, if she