Jean Jacques the better--that is what she thinks."

"No, you are wrong, my friend," rejoined M. Fille. "She said to Madame
Poucette's sister"--he held up the letter--"that when they had proved
they could live without anybody's help they would come back to see you.
Zoe thought that, having taken her life in her own hands, she ought to
justify herself before she asked your forgiveness and a place at your
table. She felt that you could only love her and be glad of her, if her
man was independent of you. It is a proud and sensitive soul--but there
it is!"

"It is romance, it is quixotism--ah, heart of God, what quixotism!"
exclaimed Jean Jacques.

"She gets her romance and quixotism from Jean Jacques Barbille," retorted
the Clerk of the Court. "She does more feeling than thinking--like you."

Jean Jacques' heart was bleeding, but he drew himself up proudly, and
caught his hand away from the warm palm of Poucette's widow. As his
affairs crumbled his pride grew more insistent. M. Fille had challenged
his intellect--his intellect!

"My life has been a procession of practical things," he declared
oracularly. "I have been a man of business who designs. I am no
dreamer. I think. I act. I suffer. I have been the victim of romance,
not its interpreter. Mercy of God, what has broken my life, what but
romance--romance, first with one and then with another! More feeling
than thinking, Maitre Fille--you say that? Why the Barbilles have ever
in the past built up life on a basis of thought and action, and I have
added philosophy--the science of thought and act. Jean Jacques Barbille