in his own way, too, he tried to move me with something that would be very simple. He told me that ever since we became friends, we two, he had not an hour of continuous sleep, unless perhaps when coming back dead-tired from outpost duty, and that he longed to get back to it and yet hadn't the courage to tear himself away from here. He was as simple as that. He's a tres galant homme of absolute probity, even with himself. I said to him: The trouble is, Don Juan, that it isn't love but mistrust that keeps you in torment. I might have said jealousy, but I didn't like to use that word. A parrot would have added that I had given him no right to be jealous. But I am no parrot. I recognized the rights of his passion which I could very well see. He is jealous. He is not jealous of my past or of the future; but he is jealously mistrustful of me, of what I am, of my very soul. He believes in a soul in the same way Therese does, as something that can be touched with grace or go to perdition; and he doesn't want to be damned with me before his own judgment seat. He is a most noble and loyal gentleman, but I have my own Basque peasant soul and don't want to think that every time he goes away from my feet--yes, mon cher, on this carpet, look for the marks of scorching--that he goes away feeling tempted to brush the dust off his moral sleeve. That! Never!"
With brusque movements she took a cigarette out of the box, held it in her fingers for a moment, then dropped it unconsciously.
"And then, I don't love him," she uttered slowly as if speaking to herself and at the same time watching the very quality of that thought. "I never did. At first he fascinated me with his fatal aspect and his cold society smiles.
