 a very enviable fate. They are at another pole from the so-called dangerous
women who are merely coquettes. A coquette has got to work for her success. The
others have nothing to do but simply exist. You perceive the view I take of the
difference?«
    I perceived the view. I said to myself that nothing in the world could be
more aristocratic. This was the slave-owning woman who had never worked, even if
she had been reduced to live by her wits. She was a wonderful old woman. She
made me dumb. She held me fascinated by the well-bred attitude, something
sublimely aloof in her air of wisdom.
    I just simply let myself go admiring her as though I had been a mere slave
of æsthetics: the perfect grace, the amazing poise of that venerable head, the
assured as if royal - yes, royal - even flow of the voice. ... But what was it
she was talking about now? These were no longer considerations about fatal
women. She was talking about her son again. My interest turned into mere
bitterness of contemptuous attention. For I couldn't withhold it though I tried
to let the stuff go by. Educated in the most aristocratic college in Paris ...
at eighteen ... call of duty ... with General Lee to the very last cruel minute
... after that catastrophe - end of the world - return to France - to old
friendships, infinite kindness - but a life hollow, without occupation ...
    Then 1870 - and chivalrous response to adopted country's call and again
emptiness, the chafing of a proud spirit without aim and handicapped not exactly
by poverty but by lack of fortune. And she, the mother, having to look on at
this wasting of a most accomplished man, of a most chivalrous nature that
practically had no future before it.
    »You understand me well, Monsieur George. A nature like this! It is the most
refined cruelty of fate to look at. I don't know whether I suffered more in
times of war or in times of peace. You understand?«
    I bowed my head in silence. What I couldn't understand was why he delayed so
long in joining us again. Unless he had had enough of his mother? I thought
without any great resentment that I was being victimized; but then it occurred
to me that the cause of his absence was quite simple. I was familiar enough with
his habits by this time to know that he often managed to snatch an hour's sleep
or so during
