, I can tell you; but these later honours, my dear, came
to me in the shape of a very loyal and very scrupulous gentleman. For he is all
that. And as a matter of fact I was touched.«
    »I know. Even to tears,« I said provokingly. But she wasn't provoked, she
only shook her head in negation (which was absurd) and pursued the trend of her
spoken thoughts.
    »That was yesterday,« she said. »And yesterday he was extremely correct and
very full of extreme self-esteem which expressed itself in the exaggerated
delicacy with which he talked. But I know him in all his moods. I have known him
even playful. I didn't listen to him. I was thinking of something else. Of
things that were neither correct nor playful and that had to be looked at
steadily with all the best that was in me. And that was why, in the end - I
cried - yesterday.«
    »I saw it yesterday and I had the weakness of being moved by those tears for
a time.«
    »If you want to make me cry again I warn you you won't succeed.«
    »No, I know. He has been here to-day and the dry season has set in.«
    »Yes, he has been here. I assure you it was perfectly unexpected. Yesterday
he was railing at the world at large, at me who certainly have not made it, at
himself and even at his mother. All this rather in parrot language, in the words
of tradition and morality as understood by the members of that exclusive club to
which he belongs. And yet when I thought that all this, those poor hackneyed
words, expressed a sincere passion I could have found in my heart to be sorry
for him. But he ended by telling me that one couldn't believe a single word I
said, or something like that. You were here then, you heard it yourself.«
    »And it cut you to the quick,« I said. »It made you depart from your dignity
to the point of weeping on any shoulder that happened to be there. And
considering that it was some more parrot-talk after all (men have been saying
that sort of thing to women from the beginning of the world) this sensibility
seems to me childish.«
    »What perspicacity,« she observed, with an indulgent, mocking smile, then
changed her tone. »Therefore he wasn't expected to-day when he turned up,
