“Why?” he stuttered, and his face seemed contracted in unspeakable suffering.

“Why?  Hang it all, because—­It’s impossible; that’s about it.  I don’t want to.”

He looked ardently at her for some seconds longer.  Then his legs curved under him and he fell on the floor.  In a bored voice she added this simple advice: 

“Ah, don’t be a baby!”

But he was one already.  Dropping at her feet, he had put his arms round her waist and was hugging her closely, pressing his face hard against her knees.  When he felt her thus—­when he once more divined the presence of her velvety limbs beneath the thin fabric of her dress—­he was suddenly convulsed and trembled, as it were, with fever, while madly, savagely, he pressed his face against her knees as though he had been anxious to force through her flesh.  The old chair creaked, and beneath the low ceiling, where the air was pungent with stale perfumes, smothered sobs of desire were audible.

“Well, and after?” Nana began saying, letting him do as he would.  “All this doesn’t help you a bit, seeing that the thing’s impossible.  Good God, what a child you are!”

His energy subsided, but he still stayed on the floor, nor did he relax his hold of her as he said in a broken voice: 

“Do at least listen to what I came to offer you.  I’ve already seen a town house close to the Parc Monceau—­I would gladly realize your smallest wish.  In order to have you all to myself, I would give my whole fortune.  Yes, that would be my only condition, that I should have you all to myself!  Do you understand?  And if you were to consent to be mine only, oh, then I should want you to be the loveliest, the richest, woman on earth.  I should give you carriages and diamonds and dresses!”

At each successive offer Nana shook her head proudly.  Then seeing that he still continued them, that he even spoke of settling money on her—­for he was at loss what to lay at her feet—­she apparently lost patience.

“Come, come, have you done bargaining with me?  I’m a good sort, and I don’t mind giving in to you for a minute or two, as your feelings are making you so ill, but I’ve had enough of it now, haven’t I?  So let me get up.  You’re tiring me.”

She extricated herself from his clasp, and once on her feet: 

“No, no, no!” she said.  “I don’t want to!”

With that he gathered himself up painfully and feebly dropped into a chair, in which he leaned back with his face in his hands.  Nana began pacing up and down in her turn.  For a second or two she looked at the stained wallpaper, the greasy toilet table, the whole dirty little room as it basked in the pale sunlight.  Then she paused in front of the count and spoke with quiet directness.

“It’s strange how rich men fancy they can have everything for their money.  Well, and if I don’t want to consent—­what then?  I don’t care a pin for your presents!  You might give me Paris, and yet I should say no!  Always no!  Look here, it’s scarcely clean in this room, yet I should think it very nice if I wanted to live in it with you.  But one’s fit to kick the bucket in your palaces if one isn’t in love.  Ah, as to money, my poor pet, I can lay my hands on that if I want to, but I tell you, I trample on it; I spit on it!”