The pair walked some distance in silence; the girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.
"Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and which you do not choose to gather up." "Eh!" said Modeste, "so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks himself a mirror, does he ?" "No, an echo," he answered, with a gesture of sublime humility.
"The duke loves you, but he loves you too much.

If I, a dwarf, have understood the infinite delicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine.

You are eminently a woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always prefer himself to you.

Why?
ah, that I don't know.

But I will make myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan which I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of every girl.