“Because with one woman you have a real bond of love which attaches you to her, while with a hundred women it’s not the same at all.  There is no real love.  I don’t understand how a man can associate with such women.”

“But they are all right.”

“No, they can’t be!”

“Yes, they are!”

“Oh, stop; you disgust me!”

“But then, why did you ask me how many sweethearts I had had?”

“Because——­”

“That’s no reason!”

“What were they-actresses, little shop-girls, or society women?”

“A few of each.”

“It must have been rather monotonous toward the last.”

“Oh, no; it’s amusing to change.”

She remained thoughtful, staring at her champagne glass.  It was full —­she drank it in one gulp; then putting it back on the table, she threw her arms around her husband’s neck and murmured in his ear: 

“Oh! how I love you, sweetheart! how I love you!”

He threw his arms around her in a passionate embrace.  A waiter, who was just entering, backed out, closing the door discreetly.  In about five minutes the head waiter came back, solemn and dignified, bringing the fruit for dessert.  She was once more holding between her fingers a full glass, and gazing into the amber liquid as though seeking unknown things.  She murmured in a dreamy voice: 

“Yes, it must be fun!”

A FAMILY AFFAIR

The small engine attached to the Neuilly steam-tram whistled as it passed the Porte Maillot to warn all obstacles to get out of its way and puffed like a person out of breath as it sent out its steam, its pistons moving rapidly with a noise as of iron legs running.  The train was going along the broad avenue that ends at the Seine.  The sultry heat at the close of a July day lay over the whole city, and from the road, although there was not a breath of wind stirring, there arose a white, chalky, suffocating, warm dust, which adhered to the moist skin, filled the eyes and got into the lungs.  People stood in the doorways of their houses to try and get a breath of air.

The windows of the steam-tram were open and the curtains fluttered in the wind.  There were very few passengers inside, because on warm days people preferred the outside or the platforms.  They consisted of stout women in peculiar costumes, of those shopkeepers’ wives from the suburbs, who made up for the distinguished looks which they did not possess by ill-assumed dignity; of men tired from office-work, with yellow faces, stooped shoulders, and with one shoulder higher than the other, in consequence of, their long hours of writing at a desk.  Their uneasy and melancholy faces also spoke of domestic troubles, of constant want of money, disappointed hopes, for they all belonged to the army of poor, threadbare devils who vegetate economically in cheap, plastered houses with a tiny piece of neglected garden on the outskirts of Paris, in the midst of those fields where night soil is deposited.