“No, I never forget anything,” she answered,
rising.
Fred detained her an instant, saying, in a low voice:
“Forgive me. This moment, Jacqueline, is
decisive. I must have an answer. I never
shall speak to you again of my sorrow. But decide
now—on the spot. Is all ended between
us?”
“Not our old friendship, Fred,” said Jacqueline,
tears rising in her eyes.
“So be it, then, if you so will it. But
our friendship never will show itself unless you are
in need of friendship, and then only with the discretion
that your present attitude toward me has imposed.”
“Are you ready, Mademoiselle,” said Gerard,
who, to allow them to end their conversation, had
obligingly turned his attention to some madrigals
that Colette Odinska was laughing over.
Jacqueline shook her head resolutely, though at that
moment her heart felt as if it were in a vise, and
the moisture in her eyes looked like anything but
a refusal. Then, without giving herself time for
further thought, she whirled away into the dance with
M. de Cymier. It was over, she had flung to the
winds her chance for happiness, and wounded a heart
more cruelly than Hubert Marien had ever wounded hers.
The most horrible thing in this unending warfare we
call love is that we too often repay to those who
love us the harm that has been done us by those whom
we have loved. The seeds of mistrust and perversity
sown by one man or by one woman bear fruit to be gathered
by some one else.
A COMEDY AND A TRAGEDY
The departure of Frederic d’Argy for Tonquin
occasioned a break in the intercourse between his
mother and the family of De Nailles. The wails
of Hecuba were nothing to the lamentations of poor
Madame d’Argy; the unreasonableness of her wrath
and the exaggeration in her reproaches hindered even
Jacqueline from feeling all the remorse she might otherwise
have felt for her share in Fred’s departure.
She told her father, who the first time in her life
addressed her with some severity, that she could not
be expected to love all the young men who might threaten
to go to the wars, or to fling themselves from fourth-story
windows, for her sake.
“It was very indelicate and inconsiderate of
Fred to tell any one that it was my fault that he
was doing anything so foolish,” she said, with
true feminine deceit, “but he has taken the
very worst possible means to make me care for him.
Everybody has too much to say about this matter which
concerns only him and me. Even Giselle thought
proper to write me a sermon!”
And she gave vent to her feelings in an exclamation
of three syllables that she had learned from the Odinskas,
which meant: “I don’t care!”
(je m’en moque).
