At last Noel could stand it no longer, to the great delight of Madame Chaffour.

“Enough of these recriminations!” cried he, rising.  “If I hide our relations, it is because I am constrained to do so.  Of what do you complain?  You have unrestrained liberty; and you use it, too, and so largely that your actions altogether escape me.  You accuse me of creating a vacuum around you.  Who is to blame?  Did I grow tired of a happy and quiet existence?  My friends would have come to see us in a home in accordance with a modest competence.  Can I bring them here?  On seeing all this luxury, this insolent display of my folly, they would ask each other where I obtained all the money I have spent on you.  I may have a mistress, but I have not the right to squander a fortune that does not belong to me.  If my acquaintances learnt to-morrow that it is I who keep you, my future prospects would be destroyed.  What client would confide his interests to the imbecile who ruined himself for the woman who has been the talk of all Paris?  I am not a great lord, I have neither an historical name to tarnish, nor an immense fortune to lose.  I am plain Noel Gerdy, a advocate.  My reputation is all that I possess.  It is a false one, I admit.  Such as it is, however, I must keep it, and I will keep it.”

Juliette who knew her Noel thoroughly, saw that she had gone far enough.  She determined, therefore, to put him in a good humor again.  “My friend,” said she, tenderly, “I did not wish to cause you pain.  You must be indulgent, I am so horribly nervous this evening.”

This sudden change delighted the advocate, and almost sufficed to calm his anger.  “You will drive me mad with your injustice,” said he.  “While I exhaust my imagination to find what can be agreeable to you, you are perpetually attacking my gravity; yet it is not forty-eight hours since we were plunged in all the gaiety of the carnival.  I kept the fete of Shrove Tuesday like a student.  We went to a theatre; I then put on a domino, and accompanied you to the ball at the opera, and even invited two of my friends to sup with us.”

“It was very gay indeed!” answered the young woman, making a wry face.

“So I think.”

“Do you!  Then you are not hard to please.  We went to the Vaudeville, it is true, but separately, as we always do, I alone above, you below.  At the ball you looked as though you were burying the devil.  At the supper table your friends were as melancholy as a pair of owls.  I obeyed your orders by affecting hardly to know you.  You imbibed like a sponge, without my being able to tell whether you were drunk or not.”

“That proves,” interrupted Noel, “that we ought not to force our tastes.  Let us talk of something else.”

He took a few steps in the room, then looking at his watch said:  “Almost one o’clock; my love, I must leave you.”

“What! you are not going to remain?”

“No, to my great regret; my mother is dangerously ill.”