you a favor, Monsieur Laurent. Our friend has never for a moment suspected Henriette's love for you … Please let him always remain ignorant of her extravagant whim!"
"That is too much!" Laurent interrupted. "Do I have to enter your plans to the extent of making your daughter hate me?"
And within, he was saying to himsef: "Too poor for Gina; too rich for Henriette!" Then, giving free rein to his bitterness:
"Really, my dear Tilbak, you are all the same here in Antwerp! You reduce everything to a question of greasy pennies. My worthy cousin Dobouziez would unreservedly approve of you. The ties of the heart and emotions have no weight. Everything is wiped out by business considerations. Gold alone joins and sunders. You all have money-tills instead of hearts. There! Even you, the Tilbaks, whom I have always considered as my own, are no better than the rest! And I am destined to live always alone and misunderstood … Eternally declassed, a creature of exception, I shall never anywhere find my equals, people of the same temperament as myself!…"
And, in the clutches of a nervous crisis that had been smouldering since that morning, his body shaking from these reiterated emotions, he threw himself into a chair and burst into tears like a child.
Siska, however, having been attracted by the sound of their voices, had half opened the door and heard the end of the conversation. She came to the young fellow and tried to calm him with her motherly words.
"You naughty child! What a way to talk about us! Listen to me, my dear Laurent, and don't be angry. We'll talk this all over again before our departure, but
