"It is a consolation," Entragues replied, "but I am refused it. I have never had enough presence of mind to juggle with my chagrin and divert myself by letting my eye follow the play of glass balls. Is my nature, perhaps, excessively complicated? Sincerity, like a diamond, has more than one facet...."
"Then," Sixtine interrupted, "it is a decomposed sincerity. Labor is needed to assist it to the state of pure light and all this psychological physics is too difficult a maneuver for my simplicity. If you only knew how simple I am, how simple all women are, dreadfully simple, my friend! In truth, one has but to take them by the hand!"
"Like the woman of a little while ago," Entragues thought. "Those whom one supposes strange are only more feminine women, thrust by their nerves to the extreme of feminity. It is true: to dominate the others, one must study them specially. Did not Ribot find the laws of memory and will in mental pathology? It would be excellent to make analogous studies of hysteria, but if the matter does not attempt it, who is capable of doing it? After all, the very subjects of the experiment have today given me two valuable lessons. Unfortunately, it is to be feared that they will avail me little in practical life. I am in a mood to live and I do not know how. Come, I will provoke her a little and guide myself by her replies. Women may be simple, but they appear artful and we can only act in their presence according to received impressions. Simple as a deciphered dispatch, simple when you have the key. What was she saying to me? I must answer. She is looking at me. Those beautiful large eyes! Ah! I truly love her!"
"Have me!" he exclaimed, falling on his knees. "I love you, I can say no more."
Her restless studded fingers clasped her knees that were covered with a red robe. Hubert embraced the knees and kissed the fingers. It was the same as happens with little serpents in skins of old silver found under withered ferns, in the sunlight; as soon as one touches them, they stiffen and become as brittle as glass. Sixtine, at this brusque contact, grew rigid as a lady of stone in her emblazoned seat, and Hubert felt that the least insistence would shatter that soul. It was too late. As Sixtine had so well conjectured, the startled occasion had fled. The very woman who, an instant before,--something Hubert did not suspect--would have surrendered for the present and for eternity to the first kiss, this same woman resented a new attempt at intimacy as an attempt at violation.