“Very dear friend,” he urged with undaunted confidence, “you must know that I love you.”

She shook her head impatiently, all the time wondering what it was that prevented her from slipping into his arms.  She knew that she was treating him badly by this brusque change of front; but she could not help it.  Then she began to feel sorry for him.

“We have been very good friends,” he said.  “I have always admired you enormously.  I did not think that I should dare to love you until that day when I overheard that old villain Niepce make his advances.  Then, when I perceived my acute jealousy, I knew that I was loving you.  Ever since, I have thought only of you.  I swear to you that if you will not belong to me, it is already finished for me!  Altogether!  Never have I seen a woman like you!  So strong, so proud, so kind, and so beautiful!  You are astonishing, yes, astonishing!  No other woman could have drawn herself out of an impossible situation as you have done, since the disappearance of your husband.  For me, you are a woman unique.  I am very sincere.  Besides, you know it ...  Dear friend!”

She shook her head passionately.

She did not love him.  But she was moved.  And she wanted to love him.  She wanted to yield to him, only liking him, and to love afterwards.  But this obstinate instinct held her back.  “I do not say, now,” Chirac went on.  “Let me hope.”

The Latin theatricality of his gestures and his tone made her sorrowful for him.

“My poor Chirac!” she plaintively murmured, and began to put on her gloves.

“I shall hope!” he persisted.

She pursed her lips.  He seized her violently by the waist.  She drew her face away from his, firmly.  She was not hard, not angry now.  Disconcerted by her compassion, he loosed her.

“My poor Chirac,” she said, “I ought not to have come.  I must go.  It is perfectly useless.  Believe me.”

“No, no!” he whispered fiercely.

She stood up and the abrupt movement pushed the table gratingly across the floor.  The throbbing spell of the flesh was snapped like a stretched string, and the scene over.  The landlord, roused from his doze, stumbled in.  Chirac had nothing but the bill as a reward for his pains.  He was baffled.

They left the restaurant, silently, with a foolish air.

Dusk was falling on the mournful streets, and the lamp-lighters were lighting the miserable oil lamps that had replaced gas.  They two, and the lamplighters, and an omnibus were alone in the streets.  The gloom was awful; it was desolating.  The universal silence seemed to be the silence of despair.  Steeped in woe, Sophia thought wearily upon the hopeless problem of existence.  For it seemed to her that she and Chirac had created this woe out of nothing, and yet it was an incurable woe!

CHAPTER VII

SUCCESS