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"But you speak French like a Frenchman," cried Elodie. "It is my sole claim, Madame," said I, "to your consideration." She laughed, obviously pleased, and invited me to sit. The waiter came up. What would I have?
Élodie resumed in a very pleading voice: "I was full of Jean-Jacques' philosophy; I believed men were naturally honest and honourable. My misfortune was to have encountered a lover who was not formed in the school of nature and natural morality, and whom social prejudice, ambition, self-love, a false point of honour had made selfish and treacherous."
Some voice which he can't resist will soon say, 'Bingo, die for your country. And our good friend, without changing a muscle of his ugly face, will stretch himself out dead on the floor." "Truth," said Andrew, with a hard glint in his eyes, "does sometimes issue from the lips of a fool." Bakkus laughed, passing his hand over his silvering locks; but Elodie looked very serious.
"Damn the Princess Elodie!" he thought, with more emphasis than reverence, and he rode along silently, slowly, a frown clouding his fresh, boyish brow, face to face with the prose of the existence he would fain have had all romance and poetry.
Of course, he did not expect Elodie to interest herself in military history, but he deplored her unconcealed hatred of his devotion to a darling pursuit. Why could not she find pleasure in some intelligent occupation? To spend one's leisure in untidy sloth did not consort with the dignity of a human being. Why didn't she do this or that? She rejected all suggestions.
He approached timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and came to the window. "Why, my dear cousin, what a state you are in!" "Elodie keeps everything for herself," said Baron Hulot. "Those Chardins are a blackguard crew." "Will you come home to us?" "Oh, no, no!" cried the old man. "I would rather go to America." "Adeline is on the scent."
Baron Hulot got into the coach, deserting Mademoiselle Elodie without taking leave of her, as he might have tossed aside a novel he had finished.
In that she had hurled insulting defiance at a vast, rough audience, Elodie had done a valiant thing. She had done it for love of him. His failure to respond had evoked her reproach. But the very act for which she claimed due reward was a stab to the heart of any lingering love. And yet, he must go on. There was no way out.
Andrew knew that hers were not the habits of the Far-away One, who like himself would be a tidy soul, bringing into commonplace tidiness an exquisitely harmonious sense of order; but the Far-away One was a mythical being endowed with qualities which it would be absurd to look for in Elodie.
They had risen, and while they walked up and down the shady avenues of the gardens, he informed her that he only esteemed her the more because she had suffered wrong, Élodie entertained no such high claims; however, take him as he was, she loved him, and admired the brilliant artistic genius she divined in him.
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