“Don’t send me away.  You who are always charitable,” he said.  “If you only knew what a pleasure a Parisian conversation is after coming from Tonquin!”

“But I am so little of a Parisienne, or at least what you mean by that term, and my conversation is not worth coming for,” objected Giselle.

In her extreme modesty she did not realize how much she had gained in intellectual culture.  Women left to themselves have time to read, and Giselle had done this all the more because she had considered it a duty.  Must she not know enough to instruct and superintend the education of her son?  With much strong feeling, yet with much simplicity, she spoke to Fred of this great task, which sometimes frightened her; he gave her his advice, and both discussed together the things that make up a good man.  Giselle brought up frequently the subject of heredity:  she named no one, but Fred could see that she had a secret terror lest Enguerrand, who in person was very like his father, might also inherit his character.  Fears on this subject, however, appeared unfounded.  There was nothing about the child that was not good; his tastes were those of his mother.  He was passionately fond of Fred, climbing on his lap as soon as the latter arrived and always maintaining that he, too, wanted a pretty red ribbon to wear in his buttonhole, a ribbon only to be got by sailing far away over the seas, like sailors.

“A sailor!  Heaven forbid!” cried Madame de Talbrun.

“Oh! sailors come back again.  He has come back.  Couldn’t he take me away with him soon?  I have some stories about cabin-boys who were not much older than I.”

“Let us hope that your friend Fred won’t go away,” said Giselle.  “But why do you wish to be a cabinboy?”

“Because I want to go away with him, if he does not stay here—­because I like him,” answered Enguerrand in a tone of decision.

Hereupon Giselle kissed her boy with more than usual tenderness.  He would not take to the hunting-field, she thought, the boulevard, and the corps de ballet.  She would not lose him.  “But, oh, Fred!” she cried, “it is not to be wondered at that he is so fond of you!  You spoil him!  You will be a devoted father some day; your vocation is evidently for marriage.”

She thought, in thus speaking, that she was saying what Madame d’Argy would like her to say.

“In the matter of children, I think your son is enough for me,” he said, one day; “and as for marriage, you would not believe how all women—­I mean all the young girls among whom I should have to make a choice—­are indifferent to me.  My feeling almost amounts to antipathy.”

For the first time she ventured to say:  “Do you still care for Jacqueline?”

“About as much as she cares for me,” he answered, dryly.  “No, I made a mistake once, and that has made me cautious for the future.”

Another day he said: 

“I know now who was the woman I ought to have loved.”