Madame Dermont occupied a pretty little apartment on Rue de Paradis-PoissonniÈre; she had only one servant, but that was enough for a woman who lived alone, received little company, and was happier in her own home than at the most fashionable social assemblages. She had about eight thousand francs a year; that would have been very little for one who desired to follow all the fashions and to live a life of luxury and dissipation; it was quite sufficient for one who, like her, did not seek to cut a figure in the world, and who loved to think.

Nathalie was in her salon, seated at her piano and looking at the music. But her fingers were motionless on the keys; it is probable, therefore, that the young woman was thinking of something different from what was before her. It was two hours after her visit to her young friend Juliette.

She was roused from her reverie by the bell. The sound made her start; and yet, she no longer expected anyone—at least, she no longer expected the person of whom she was thinking.

The servant announced Monsieur AdhÉmar Monbrun. At that name, Nathalie trembled and the blood rose to her cheeks; she struggled to conceal her emotion, cast a glance at her dress, and told the maid to admit the visitor.

AdhÉmar entered with the ease of manner which is due to familiarity with good society, and is the especial attribute of men of letters and artists.

"I have come rather tardily, madame," he said, "to thank you for your kindness in sending to inquire about the trifling burn on my hand. You must have considered me very discourteous for not coming at once to offer you my acknowledgments, did you not, madame?"

"Why, no, monsieur; not at all. You had burned yourself in my cause; surely, the least I could do was to inquire concerning the condition of your burn; it was my duty; whereas there was no sort of obligation on you, monsieur, to put yourself out and waste your time by calling upon me."

"Oh! madame, allow me to believe that you do not think so ill of me as to deem it possible that it could put me out to come to see you. I should be a very unfortunate mortal if it were not a pleasure to me. But my reason for not coming was——"

"Well, monsieur, it was——?"

"Mon Dieu! madame, I don't know just how to say it. I am embarrassed——"

"You, monsieur, embarrassed with a lady! Oh! I can't believe it—unless, indeed, you have something very disagreeable to say to her; in that case, I can imagine that it comes hard to you."

"Ah! it seems to me that one could never willingly be disagreeable to you—and yet——"

"Well! you haven't told me yet why you didn't come before."

"Well, madame, it was because I thought that when a man had the good fortune to be received by you, he must inevitably feel a desire to come often—yes, very often—and that that might offend you."

Nathalie lowered her eyes, and murmured:

"Really? was that why you didn't come?"

"Yes. You know, madame, there is a proverb that warns us against playing with fire; and, to me, you are the fire at this moment."

"You have already proved to my satisfaction that you are not afraid of it. Do all women cause you such terror? Frankly, monsieur, I do not believe it!"

"Oh, no, madame! there are some with whom one cannot encounter anything more dangerous than an ignis fatuus—and that is not to be feared."

"A truce to jesting, Monsieur AdhÉmar; I want to see your wrist, and satisfy myself that it is really well."

AdhÉmar pulled up his sleeve and showed her the wrist that had been burned. The better to examine it, Nathalie must needs take the hand which was held out, and draw it toward her; and that hand, when she touched it, presumed to press hers very tenderly, thereby causing keen emotion to the young woman, who faltered:

"It is cured, but you have a great scar there. Mon Dieu! shall you always have it?"

"I hope so!"

"What do you say? you hope so? Why?"

"Because it will remind me of the day when I had the good fortune to be of some little service to you."

"Some little service! Why do you say a little, when it is quite possible that you saved my life?"

"Ah! if you really do owe me anything, it depends only on you to pay the debt."

"How, pray?"

"You cannot guess, madame?"

"No, monsieur; I am not good at guessing."

"Oh! I beg your pardon—but you should be better able than any other to divine the thoughts that come from the heart."

"Why I, more than another?"

"Because there is a something in your eyes which indicates their perspicacity."

"If my eyes have such a peculiar expression, I shall not dare to raise them again."

"Oh! do not deprive me of the pleasure of looking at them; that would be a punishment."

"Come, come, monsieur, don't talk to me in this way; you are in the habit of making pretty speeches to all women, no matter how little they may deserve them; but, as a general rule, they are accustomed to your language, to your flatteries, and they laugh at them because they know that they must not take too seriously the gallant speeches of a man to whom love is only a pleasant pastime. But I am not one of those women, monsieur! I go into society very little, and the life that artists lead is entirely unfamiliar to me. You will agree, will you not, that if I should take what you have said to me as being said in earnest, if I should place any reliance on your words, I should make a great mistake and should very soon have reason to repent?"

AdhÉmar was silent for a few moments; but he looked at Nathalie, and his expression was almost sad. At last he said, with a sigh:

"Ah! madame, if I had the good fortune to be loved, I should be too happy! But, no; women are all inconstant, they never love truly; they want to be adored, but they reserve the right to love us only in accordance with their caprice."

Nathalie could not restrain a smile, as she replied:

"You have a very singular way of paying court to one of them!"

"Oh! I beg your pardon, madame, I beg your pardon; I didn't mean that to apply to you!"

"But you were speaking of women in general?"

"True; but, of course, there are exceptions."

"Have you never met any of the exceptions?"

"No, I have not had that good fortune."

"And that is what has given you such a bad opinion of all women?"

"Oh! I am wrong, no doubt; for, after all, the fact that no one has ever loved me doesn't prove that they may not have loved others."

"Do you say that no one has ever loved you, monsieur?"

"Never really, madame."

"Are you quite sure of that?"

"Only too sure, alas!"

"But, monsieur, have you, who think that no one has ever really loved you, have you yourself ever loved in that way?"

AdhÉmar did not reply for some seconds, then murmured:

"Why, I think so——"

"Ah! you are not perfectly sure!"

"When one is inclined to love passionately, madame, if he sees that his passion is not reciprocated, don't you think that that should suffice to lessen his ardor?"

"No, monsieur, I do not think so; I think that when one is really in love, it is not so easy to banish from one's heart the object of one's love. In short, it is my opinion that love is not to be reasoned with, and that when you come to the point where you begin to reason you have ceased to love. But, upon my word, this is a strange conversation; one would think that we had to write an essay on the proper way to love.—Have you produced a new play or written a new novel since I saw you?"

"No, madame, no; I have done nothing."

"You have been lazy, eh? Fie! that's very bad!"

"No, I haven't been lazy; but I have been preoccupied—which is by no means the same thing, and is a much greater hindrance to work."

"You know Monsieur Lucien Grischard, do you not, monsieur?"

"I do, madame; but how did you know?"

"Oh! in the most natural way; this Monsieur Lucien knows—indeed, I may say that he is courting a young lady who is my most intimate friend, Mademoiselle Juliette Mirotaine."

"Yes, he is very much in love with her, and would like to marry her; he has told me that."

"And Juliette has no secrets from me; she is very fond of this Lucien, whom her father refuses to allow her to marry. She has told me all her sorrows."

"Very good; but I don't quite see where I come in."

Nathalie blushed, hesitated, and finally replied:

"If my friend tells me everything that interests her, do you not think, monsieur, that I should do as much? That accident of mine—which, but for you, might have been so disastrous to me—I told her about that, and naturally I told her the name of the person who had—burned himself in his efforts to put out the fire. When she heard your name, which is so well known, she cried: 'That gentleman is a friend of Lucien!'—And that is how I knew that you know him. Is that explanation satisfactory, monsieur?"

"Ah! madame, it is a thousand times too kind of you to give it to me; my reason for asking was to find out whether you had remembered me."

"It would have been very ungrateful on my part to forget you so soon."

"Mon Dieu! madame, a very clever man has said: 'Ingratitude is independence of the heart!'—That is rather sad, but it is more or less true."

"No, monsieur; ingratitude simply proves that one has no heart."

The conversation was prolonged to a great length between those two, who understood each other so well even when they were silent. But AdhÉmar was afraid of presuming too far, as it was his first visit; so he took his leave of Madame Dermont at last, saying:

"Will you allow me to come to see you again?"

Nathalie accorded him that permission with such a pleasant smile that it was impossible to doubt the pleasure it afforded her to give it.

As he left the pretty widow's presence, AdhÉmar said to himself:

"That is a most charming woman; I feel that I should soon love her dearly. Perhaps it would be wiser for me not to see her again; for, if I yield to the temptation to love her in good earnest, she will do like the rest, she will deceive me and make me unhappy. But I am arguing as if she were already my mistress! What right have I to think that she will love me, that she will yield to me? But something tells me that she will. Well, after all, why should I be afraid to be happy when the opportunity offers? 'We must love!' said Jean-Jacques; 'we must love!' said Voltaire.—That is the only subject, I fancy, on which those two famous men agreed. So we must not repulse love when it tries to steal into our hearts; and even though it should cause us more pain than pleasure, that is better than not to love at all."

Madame Dermont did not say all that to herself, but she yielded to the impulse of her heart, which disposed her to love AdhÉmar; his personality attracted her, and even before she knew him she loved him for what he had written. Now that she knew him, it gave her pleasure to hear him talk; a secret sympathy drew her toward him, and, despite his low opinion of women, she did not try to combat the love which was taking possession of her heart; she hoped to compel him in the end to do justice to her sex; for, as she was not fickle in her tastes, she could not understand how all women could be frivolous and inconstant.

It caused her great joy, therefore, to hear AdhÉmar ask permission to call upon her again; and if she was unable to conceal the pleasure that request afforded her, it was because she was not a coquette and did not attempt to hide her real feelings beneath a feigned indifference.