"Yes, mademoiselle, the respectful pity to which I think you have a
right."
"Pity!" she said, stopping her horse and slowly turning her disdainful,
half-closed eyes towards me. "I am not so fortunate as to understand
you."
"It is really quite simple, mademoiselle; if disillusion, doubt, and
callousness are the bitterest fruits of long experience, nothing in the
world deserves pity so much as a heart withered by mistrust before it
has even seen life."
"Sir," said Mlle. Laroque, with a strange vehemence, "you do not know
what you are talking about. And," she added more harshly, "you forget
to whom you are speaking!"
"That is true, mademoiselle," I answered gently, bowing. "I may have
spoken without much knowledge, and perhaps I forgot, to some extent, to
whom I was speaking. But you set me the example."
Her eyes fixed on the top of the trees that bordered the road, Mlle.
Marguerite asked, with haughty irony:
"Must I beg your pardon?"
"Most certainly, mademoiselle," I replied firmly, "if either of us
should ask pardon, it is you. You are rich, I am poor; you can humble
yourself.... I cannot."
There was silence. Her tightened lips, her quivering nostrils, and the
sudden whiteness of her forehead, showed what a struggle was going on
within her. Suddenly lowering her whip as if to salute, she said:
"Very well, I beg your pardon."
At the same moment she gave her horse a sharp cut and set off at a
gallop, leaving me in the middle of the road.