“How strange he should be here!” said Sylvie, “How very strange!  He is so like the Marquis Fontenelle, Katrine!  So very like!  I used to go to the theatre and frighten myself with studying the different points of resemblance! be the rough copy of Fontenelle’s,—­and I always saw in the actor what the gentleman would be if he continued to live as he was doing.  Miraudin, whose amours are a disgrace, even to the stage!—­Miraudin, who in his position of actor-manager, takes despicable advantage of all the poor ignorant, struggling creatures who try to get into his company, and whose vain little heads are turned by a stray compliment,—­and to think that the Marquis Fontenelle should be merely the better-born copy of so mean a villain!  Ah, what useless tears I have shed about it,—­how I have grieved and worried myself all in vain!—­and now . . .”

“Now he asks you to marry him,” said Madame Bozier gently, “And you think it would be no use?  You could not perhaps make him a better man?”

“Neither I nor any woman could!” said Sylvie, “I do not believe very much in ‘reforming’ men, Katrine.  If they need to reform, they must reform themselves.  We make our own lives what they are.”

“Dear little philosopher!” said Madame Bozier tenderly, taking Sylvie’s small white hand as it hung down from her shoulder and kissing it, “You are very depressed to-day!  You must not take things so seriously!  If you do not love the Marquis as you once did—­”

“As I once did—­ah, yes!” said Sylvie, “I did love him.  I thought he could not be otherwise than great and true and noble-hearted—­but—­”

She broke off with a sigh.

“Well, and now that you know he is not the hero you imagined him, all you have to do is to tell him so,” said the practical Bozier cheerfully, “Or if you do not want to pain him by such absolute candour, give him his refusal as gently and kindly as you can.”

Sylvie sighed again.

“I am very sorry,” she said, “If I could have foreseen this—­ perhaps—­”

“But did you not foresee it?” asked Madame Bozier persistently, “Did you not realize that men always want what they cannot have—­and that the very fact of your leaving Paris increased his ardour and sent him on here in pursuit?”

Sylvie Hermenstein was of a very truthful nature, and she had not attempted to deny this suggestion.

“Yes—­I confess I did think that if I separated myself altogether from him it might induce him to put himself in a more honourable position with me—­but I did not know then—­” she paused, and a deep flush crimsoned her cheeks.

“Did not know what?” queried Madame Bozier softly.

Sylvie hesitated a moment, then spoke out bravely.

“I did not know then that I should meet another man whose existence would become ten times more interesting and valuable to me than his!  Yes, Katrine, I confess it!  There is no shame in honesty!  And so, to be true to myself, however much the Marquis might love me now, I could never be his wife.”