She suddenly threw the packet into the fire and watched the letters as they lightly curled, at first spotted with fair patches, and enveloped in light smoke, then bursting into flame that cast its rosy reflection on Marianne’s face.  Little by little all disappeared save a patch of black powder on the logs, that danced like a mourning veil fluttering in the wind and immediately disappeared up the chimney:—­the dust of dead love, the ashes of oaths, all black like mourning crepe.

Marianne watched the burning of the letters, bending her forehead, while a strange smile played on her lips, and an expression as of triumphant joy gleamed in her eyes.

When the work was done, she raised her head and turned toward Guy and in a quivering voice, she said proudly and insolently: 

“Requiescat! See how everything ends!  It is a long time since lovers who have ceased to love invented cremation!  Nothing is new under the sun!”

She was no longer the same woman.  A moment before she manifested a sort of endearing humility, but now she was ironically boastful, looking at Lissac with the air of one triumphing over a dupe.  He bit his lips slightly, rubbing his hands together, while examining her sidelong, without affectation.  Marianne’s ironical smile told him all that she now had to say.

It was not the first time that he had been a witness to such a transformation of the feminine countenance before and after the return of letters.  Guy for some time had ceased to be astonished at anything in connection with women.

“Now, my dear,” said Marianne, “I hope that you will do me the kindness of allowing me to go on in my own way in life, and that I shall not have the annoyance of finding you again in the way of my purpose.”

“I confess,” Lissac replied, “that I should be the worst of ingrates if I did not forget many things in consideration of what I owe you, both in the present and in the past.  Your burned letters still shed their fragrance!”

Marianne touched the half-consumed logs with the tip of her foot and the debris of the paper fluttered around her shoe like little black butterflies.

“I wish I could have destroyed the past as I have made those letters flame!  It weighs on me, it chokes me!  You do not imagine, perhaps,” she said, “that I have forgiven you for your flight and all that followed it?—­If, for a moment, I almost stumbled in the mire, the fault was yours, for I loved you and you abandoned me, as a man forsakes a strumpet.—­So, you see, my dear, a woman never forgets it, and I would have cried out long before, if I had felt myself free, free as I am now that those letters are burned, the poor letters of a stupid mistress, confiding in her lover who is overcome with weariness, and who is only thinking of deserting her, while she is still intoxicated in yielding to him—­and because I adored you—­yes, truly—­because I was your mistress, do you