“Ouch!” said Marcueil to himself, for he did not like scholasticism, nor any other kind of philosophy or literature, perhaps because he knew them too well. Then, aloud, not to be outdone in pedantry, he located the quotation:

“Ipsissima verba sancti Thomas.”

“And so,” said Ellen, with great simplicity, “I believe in him because no one else will. . . because it is absurd. . . as I believe in God! Firstly, because if others believed in him, I should no longer have him all to myself, I should be jealous and deceived; and then I like remaining a virgin in the only way that is both compatible with voluptuousness and recognized by society: one is a virgin when two conditions are fulfilled: that one is unmarried, and that one’s lover is unknown. . . or impossible!”

“The Indian for a lover, you say,” repeated Marcueil. “I suppose you must be several women?”

And his voice changed, and took on a paternal mildness, as though he were consoling a child whom he was depriving of a toy that he thought it imprudent to give her.

“The ‘Indian’ is either a curiosity or a fiction, he’s not an amusement! It requires a lot of little precautions! After. . . eleven, for example, to mention only the rudiments, and since we cannot avoid numbers. . . just before we come to the limits of human capacities – the pleasure must be somewhat akin to what the teeth of a saw must feel when they’re being ground by a file! Compresses and liniments have to be used.”

“After eleven,” Ellen noted. “Then what?”

“Then, somewhere far along in the series of numbers, there comes the point where the woman writhes, howling, and runs around the room like – the popular expression is admirable! – like a poisoned rat! Then there is. . .but then, perhaps there is no Indian. It’s simpler that way.”

When a man and a woman talk so calmly for so long, the chances are that one or the other of them is hoping that they are not far from falling into each other’s arms.

“You’re heartless!” cried Ellen.

“I. . . have no heart, madame, so be it,” said Marcueil, “and so I must substitute something else for it. . . since you have come.”

He bit his lip and opened the window.

Their conversation ceased to be private as, through the large French window, it was now within the hearing of the servants bustling about – in the courtyard.

Ellen seized Marcueil’s hand.

“Do you read palms?” he inquired mockingly, pretending not to understand the simple gesture.

“No, but I read eyes, your eyes which I see quite naked today, and in which I see that, if there is such a thing as metempsychosis, somewhere in ancient times you were a very, very old courtesan. . .”

“All courtesans are queens,” replied Marcueil, just to say something insignificant, and brushing Ellen’s glove with his hairy lips with impassive courtesy.